-:NRLF 


~''-- 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NKW  YORK  •   BOSTON  •   CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •   BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA.  Lm 

TORONTO 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

POEMS 

THE  CHILDREN  OF  THE  NIGHT 

CAPTAIN  CRAIG 

THE  TOWN  DOWN  THE  RIVER 

THE  MAN  AGAINST  THE  SKY 

MERLIN 

LANCELOT 

PLAYS 

VAN  ZORN.    A  Comedy  in  Three  Acts 

THE  PORCUPINE.     A  Drama  in  Three 

Acts 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

A  BOOK  OF  POEMS 


BY 
EDWIN  ARLINGTON  ROBINSON 

Author  of  "The  Man  Against  the  Sky," 
"Merlin,  A  Poem/'  etc. 


U2eto  gorfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Att  rights  reserved 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BT  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Sat  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  June,  1920 


90 

THOMAS  SERGEANT  PERRY 
AND  LILLA  CABOT  PERRY 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 1 

'THE  WANDERING  JEW .     .  7 

NEIGHBORS 11 

THE  MILL 12 

THE  DARK  HILLS 13 

THE  THREE  TAVERNS 14 

DEMOS 27 

THE  FLYING  DUTCHMAN 29 

TACT 30 

ON  THE  WAY 31 

JOHN  BROWN 44 

THE  FALSE  GODS 52 

ARCHIBALD'S  EXAMPLE 55 

LONDON  BRIDGE 56 

TASKER  NORCROSS 67 

A  SONG  AT  SHANNON'S 79 

SOUVENIR 80 

DISCOVERY       ............  81 

FIRELIGHT 82 

THE  NEW  TENANTS  .  83 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INFERENTIAL 84 

THE  EAT 85 

RAHEL  TO  VABNHAGBN 86 

NIMMO 96 

PEACE  ON  EARTH 100 

LATE  SUMMER 103 

AN  EVANGELIST'S  WIFE 106 

THE  OLD  KING'S  NEW  JESTER 107 

LAZARUS     .                                                             .  109 


Several  poems  included  in  this  book  appeared  originally 
in  American  periodicals,  as  follows:  The  Three  Taverns, 
London  Bridge,  A  Song  at  Shannon's,  The  New  Tenants, 
Discovery,  John  Brown,  in  The  Lyric;  Archibald's  Exam 
ple,  The  Valley  of  the  Shadow,  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly; 
Nimmo,  in  Scribner's;  The  Wandering  Jew,  Souvenir,  in 
The  Outlook;  Neighbors,  Tact,  in  The  Yale  Review;  Demos, 
in  The  North  American  Review;  The  Mill,  An  Evangelist's 
Wife,  in  The  New  Republic;  Firelight,  in  Youth;  Late 
Summer,  in  Contemporary  Verse;  Inferential,  in  The  Dial; 
The  Flying  Dutchman,  in  The  Nation;  On  the  Way,  The 
False  Gods,  in  The  New  York  Sun;  Peace  on  Earth,  in  Col 
lier's  Weekly;  The  Old  King's  New  Jester,  in  The  Boston 
Transcript. 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 

THERE  were  faces  to  remember  in  the  Valley  of  the 

Shadow, 
There  were  faces  unregarded,  there  were  faces  to 

forget ; 
There  were  fires  of  grief  and  fear  that  are  a  few 

forgotten  ashes, 

There  were  sparks  of  recognition  that  are  not  for 
gotten  yet. 
For  at  first,  with  an  amazed  and  overwhelming 

indignation 
At  a  measureless  malfeasance  that  obscurely  willed 

it  thus, 
They  were  lost  and  unacquainted — till  they  found 

themselves  in  others, 
Who  had  groped  as  they  were  groping  where  dim 

ways  were  perilous. 

There  were  lives  that  were  as  dark  as  are  the  fears 

and  intuitions 
Of  a  child  who  knows  himself  and  is  alone  with 

what  he  knows; 

[11 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 

There  were  pensioners  of  dreams  and  there  were 

debtors  of  illusions, 
All  to  fail  before  the  triumph  of  a  weed  that  only 

grows. 
There  were  thirsting  heirs  of  golden  sieves  that  held 

not  wine  or  water, 
And  had  no  names  in  traffic  or  more  value  there 

than  toys: 
There  were  blighted  sons  of  wonder  in  the  Valley 

of  the  Shadow, 
Where  they  suffered  and  still  wondered  why  their 

wonder  made  no  noise. 

There  were  slaves  who  dragged  the  shackles  of  a 

precedent  unbroken, 
Demonstrating     the     fulfilment     of     unalterable 

schemes, 

Which  had  been,  before  the  cradle,  Time's  inexor 
able  tenants 
Of  what  were  now  the  dusty  ruins  of  their  father's 

dreams. 
There  were  these,  and  there  were  many  who  had 

stumbled  up  to  manhood, 
Where  they  saw  too  late  the  road  they  should  have 

taken  long  ago : 
There  were  thwarted  clerks  and  fiddlers  in  the 

Valley  of  the  Shadow, 
The  commemorative  wreckage  of  what  others  did 

not  know. 

[2] 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 

And  there  were  daughters  older  than  the  mothers 

who  had  borne  them, 
Being  older  in  their  wisdom,  which  is  older  than 

the  earth; 
And  they  were  going  forward  only  farther  into 

darkness, 
Unrelieved  as  were  the  blasting  obligations  of  their 

birth ; 
And  among  them,  giving  always  what  was  not  for 

their  possession, 
There  were  maidens,  very  quiet,  with  no  quiet  in 

their  eyes; 
There  were  daughters  of  the  silence  in  the  Valley 

of  the  Shadow, 
Each  an  isolated  item  in  the  family  sacrifice. 


There  were  creepers  among  catacombs  where  dull 

regrets  were  torches, 
Giving  light  enough  to  show  them  what  was  there 

upon  the  shelves — 
Where  there  was  more  for  them  to  see  than  pleasure 

would  remember 
Of  something  that  had  been  alive  and  once  had  been 

themselves. 
There  were  some  who  stirred  the  ruins  with  a  solid 

imprecation, 
While  as  many  fled  repentance  for  the  promise  of 

despair : 

[3] 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 

There  were  drinkers  of  wrong  waters  in  the  Valley 

of  the  Shadow, 
And  all  the  sparkling  ways  were  dust  that  once  had 

led  them  there. 


There  were  some  who  knew  the  steps  of  Age  in 
credibly  beside  them, 
And  his  fingers  upon  shoulders  that  had  never  felt 

the  wheel ; 
And  their  last  of  empty  trophies  was  a  gilded  cup 

of  nothing, 
"Which  a  contemplating  vagabond  would  not  have 

come  to  steal. 
Long  and   often  had  they  figured  for  a  larger 

valuation, 
But  the  size  of  their  addition  was  the  balance  of  a 

doubt : 
There  were  gentlemen  of  leisure  in  the  Valley  of 

the  Shadow, 
Not  allured  by  retrospection,   disenchanted,  and 

played  out. 


And   among  the   dark   endurances  of  unavowed 

reprisals 
There  were  silent  eyes  of  envy  that  saw  little  but 

saw  well; 

[4] 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 

And     over     beauty's     aftermath     of     hazardous 

ambitions 
There  were  tears  for  what  had  vanished  as  they 

vanished  where  they  fell. 
Not  assured  of  what  was  theirs,  and  always  hungry 

for  the  nameless, 
There  were  some  whose  only  passion  was  for  Time 

who  made  them  cold: 
There  were  numerous  fair  women  in  the  Valley  of 

the  Shadow, 
Dreaming  rather  less  of  heaven  than  of  hell  when 

they  were  old. 

Now  and  then,  as  if  to  scorn  the  common  touch  of 

common  sorrow, 
There  were  some  who  gave  a  few  the  distant  pity  of 

a  smile; 
And  another  cloaked  a  soul  as  with  an  ash  of 

human  embers, 
Having  covered  thus  a  treasure  that  would  last 

him  for  a  while. 
There  were  many  by  the  presence  of  the  many 

disaffected, 
Whose  exemption  was  included  in  the  weight  that 

others  bore: 
There  were  seekers  after  darkness  in  the  Valley  of 

the  Shadow, 
And  they  alone  were  there  to  find  what  they  were 

looking  for. 

[61 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  SHADOW 

So  they  were,  and  so  they  are;  and  as  they  came 

are  coming  others, 
And  among  them  are  the  fearless  and  the  meek  and 

the  unborn; 
And  a  question  that  has  held  us  heretofore  without 

an  answer 
May  abide  without  an  answer  until  all  have  ceased 

to  mourn. 
For  the  children  of  the  dark  are  more  to  name  than 

are  the  wretched, 
Or  the  broken,  or  the  weary,  or  the  baffled,  or  the 

shamed : 
There  are  builders  of  new  mansions  in  the  Valley  of 

the  Shadow, 
And  among  them  are  the  dying  and  the  blinded 

and  the  maimed. 


C6] 


THE  WANDERING  JEW 

I  SAW  by  looking  in  his  eyes 
That  they  remembered  everything; 
And  this  was  how  I  came  to  know 
That  he  was  here,  still  wandering. 
For  though  the  figure  and  the  scene 
Were  never  to  be  reconciled, 
I  knew  the  man  as  I  had  known 
His  image  when  I  was  a  child. 

With  evidence  at  every  turn, 

I  should  have  held  it  safe  to  guess 

That  all  the  newness  of  New  York 

Had  nothing  new  in  loneliness ; 

Yet  here  was  one  who  might  be  Noah, 

Or  Nathan,  or  Abimelech, 

Or  Lamech,  out  of  ages  lost, — 

Or,  more  than  all,  Melchizedek.  * 

Assured  that  he  was  none  of  these, 
I  gave  them  back  their  names  again, 
To  scan  once  more  those  endless  eyes 
Where  all  my  questions  ended  then. 
I  found  in  them  what  they  revealed 
That  I  shall  not  live  to  forget 
[71 


THE  WANDERING  JEW 

And  wondered  if  they  found  in  mine 
Compassion  that  I  might  regret. 

Pity,  I  learned,  was  not  the  least 
Of  time's  offending  benefits 
That  had  now  for  so  long  impugned 
The  conservation  of  his  wits : 
Bather  it  was  that  I  should  yield, 
Alone,  the  fealty  that  presents 
The  tribute  of  a  tempered  ear 
To  an  untempered  eloquence. 

Before  I  pondered  long  enough 
On  whence  he  came  and  who  he  was, 
I  trembled  at  his  ringing  wealth 
Of  manifold  anathemas ; 
I  wondered,  while  he  seared  the  world, 
What  new  defection  ailed  the  race, 
And  if  it  mattered  how  remote 
Our  fathers  were  from  such  a  place. 

Before  there  was  an  hour  for  me 
To  contemplate  with  less  concern 
The  crumbling  realm  awaiting  us 
Than  his  that  was  beyond  return, 
A  dawning  on  the  dust  of  years 
Had  shaped  with  an  elusive  light 
Mirages  of  remembered  scenes 
That  were  no  longer  for  the  sight. 
[8] 


THE  WANDERING  JEW 

For  now  the  gloom  that  hid  the  man 
Became  a  daylight  on  his  wrath, 
And  one  wherein  my  fancy  viewed 
New  lions  ramping  in  his  path. 
The  old  were  dead  and  had  no  fangs, 
Wherefore  he  loved  them — seeing  not 
They  were  the  same  that  in  their  time 
Had  eaten  everything  they  caught. 

The  world  around  him  was  a  gift 
Of  anguish  to  his  eyes  and  ears, 
And  one  that  he  had  long  reviled 
As  fit  for  devils,  not  for  seers. 
Where,  then,  was  there  a  place  for  him 
That  on  this  other  side  of  death 
Saw  nothing  good,  as  he  had  seen 
No  good  come  out  of  Nazareth? 

Yet  here  there  was  a  reticence, 
And  I  believe  his  only  one, 
That  hushed  him  as  if  he  beheld 
A  Presence  that  would  not  be  gone. 
In  such  a  silence  he  confessed 
How  much  there  was  to  be  denied; 
And  he  would  look  at  me  and  live, 
As  others  might  have  looked  and  died. 

As  if  at  last  he  knew  again 
That  he  had  always  known,  his  eyes 
[9] 


THE  WANDERING  JEW 

Were  like  to  those  of  one  who  gazed 
On  those  of  One  who  never  dies. 
For  such  a  moment  he  revealed 
What  life  has  in  it  to  be  lost; 
And  I  could  ask  if  what  I  saw, 
Before  me  there,  was  man  or  ghost. 

He  may  have  died  so  many  times 
That  all  there  was  of  him  to  see 
Was  pride,  that  kept  itself  alive 
As  too  rebellious  to  be  free; 
He  may  have  told,  when  more  than  once 
Humility  seemed  imminent, 
How  many  a  lonely  time  in  vain 
The  Second  Coming  came  and  went. 

Whether  he  still  defies  or  not 
The  failure  of  an  angry  task 
That  relegates  him  out  of  time 
To  chaos,  I  can  only  ask. 
But  as  I  knew  him,  so  he  was; 
And  somewhere  among  men  to-day 
Those  old,  unyielding  eyes  may  flash, 
And  flinch — and  look  the  other  way. 


[10] 


NEIGHBORS 

As  often  as  we  thought  of  her, 

We  thought  of  a  gray  life 
That  made  a  quaint  economist 

Of  a  wolf -haunted  wife; 
We  made  the  best  of  all  she  bore 

That  was  not  ours  to  bear, 
And  honored  her  for  wearing  things 

That  were  not  things  to  wear. 

There  was  a  distance  in  her  look 

That  made  us  look  again; 
And  if  she  smiled,  we  might  believe 

That  we  had  looked  in  vain. 
Rarely  she  came  inside  our  doors, 

And  had  not  long  to  stay ; 
And  when  she  left,  it  seemed  somehow 

That  she  was  far  away. 

At  last,  when  we  had  all  forgot 

That  all  is  here  to  change, 
A  shadow  on  the  commonplace 

Was  for  a  moment  strange. 
Yet  there  was  nothing  for  surprise, 

Nor  much  that  need  be  told : 
Love,  with  his  gift  of  pain,  had  given 

More  than  one  heart  could  hold, 
[ill 


THE  MILL 

THE  miller's  wife  had  waited  long, 

The  tea  was  cold,  the  fire  was  dead; 
And  there  might  yet  be  nothing  wrong 

In  how  he  went  and  what  he  said: 
" There  are  no  millers  any  more/' 

Was  all  that  she  had  heard  him  say ; 
And  he  had  lingered  at  the  door 

So  long  that  it  seemed  yesterday. 

Sick  with  a  fear  that  had  no  form 

She  knew  that  she  was  there  at  last; 
And  in  the  mill  there  was  a  warm 

And  mealy  fragrance  of  the  past. 
What  else  there  was  would  only  seem 

To  say  again  what  he  had  meant; 
And  what  was  hanging  from  a  beam 

Would  not  have  heeded  where  she  went. 

And  if  she  thought  it  followed  her, 

She  may  have  reasoned  in  the  dark 
That  one  way  of  the  few  there  were 

Would  hide  her  and  would  leave  no  mark ; 
Black  water,  smooth  above  the  weir 

Like  starry  velvet  in  the  night, 
Though  ruffled  once,  would  soon  appear 

The  same  as  ever  to  the  sight. 

[12] 


THE  DARK  HILLS 

DARK  hills  at  evening  in  the  west, 
Where  sunset  hovers  like  a  sound 
Of  golden  horns  that  sang  to  rest 
Old  bones  of  warriors  under  ground, 
Far  now  from  all  the  bannered  ways 
"Where  flash  the  legions  of  the  sun, 
You  fade  —  as  if  the  last  of  days 
Were  fading,  and  all  wars  were  done. 


[13] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

When  the  brethren  heard  of  us,  they  came  to  meet  us  as 
far  as  Appii  Forum,  and  The  Three  Taverns. 

(Acts  xxmiiy   15) 

HERODION,  Apelles,  Amplias, 
And  Andronicus?     Is  it  you  I  see — 
At  last  ?    And  is  it  you  now  that  are  gazing 
As  if  in  doubt  of  me  ?    Was  I  not  saying 
That  I  should  come  to  Rome  ?     I  did  say  that ; 
And  I  said  furthermore  that  I  should  go 
On  westward,  where  the  gateway  of  the  world 
Lets  in  the  central  sea.     I  did  say  that, 
But  I  say  only,  now,  that  I  am  Paul — 
A  prisoner  of  the  Law,  and  of  the  Lord 
A  voice  made  free.    If  there  be  time  enough 
To  live,  I  may  have  more  to  tell  you  then 
Of  western  matters.     I  go  now  to  Rome, 
Where  Csesar  waits  for  me,  and  I  shall  wait, 
And  Caesar  knows  how  long.     In  Cassarea 
There  was  a  legend  of  Agrippa  saying 
In  a  light  way  to  Festus,  having  heard 
My  deposition,  that  I  might  be  free, 
Had  I  stayed  free  of  Caesar ;  but  the  word 
Of  God  would  have  it  as  you  see  it  is — 
And  here  I  am.    The  cup  that  I  shall  drink 
[14] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

Is  mine  to  drink — the  moment  or  the  place 

Not  mine  to  say.     If  it  be  now  in  Rome, 

Be  it  now  in  Rome ;  and  if  your  faith  exceed 

The  shadow  cast  of  hope,  say  not  of  me 

Too  surely  or  too  soon  that  years  and  shipwreck, 

And  all  the  many  deserts  I  have  crossed 

That  are  not  named  or  regioned,  have  undone 

Beyond  the  brevities  of  our  mortal  healing 

The  part  of  me  that  is  the  least  of  me. 

You  see  an  older  man  than  he  who  fell 

Prone  to  the  earth  when  he  was  nigh  Damascus, 

Where  the  great  light  came  down ;  yet  I  am  he 

That  fell,  and  he  that  saw,  and  he  that  heard. 

And  I  am  here,  at  last ;  and  if  at  last 

I  give  myself  to  make  another  crumb 

For  this  pernicious  feast  of  time  and  men — 

Well,  I  have  seen  too  much  of  time  and  men 

To  fear  the  ravening  or  the  wrath  of  either. 

Yes,  it  is  Paul  you  see — the  Saul  of  Tarsus 
That  was  a  fiery  Jew,  and  had  men  slain 
For  saying  Something  was  beyond  the  Law, 
And  in  ourselves.     I  fed  my  suffering  soul 
Upon  the  Law  till  I  went  famishing, 
Not  knowing  that  I  starved.    How  should  I  know, 
More  then  than  any,  that  the  food  I  had —  . 

What  else  it  may  have  been — was  not  for  me  ? 
My  fathers  and  their  fathers  and  their  fathers 
Had  found  it  good,  and  said  there  was  no  other, 
[15] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

And  I  was  of  the  line.    When  Stephen  fell, 
Among  the  stones  that  crushed  his  life  away, 
There  was  no  place  alive  that  I  could  see 
For  such  a  man.     Why  should  a  man  be  given 
To  live  beyond  the  Law?     So  I  said  then, 
As  men  say  now  to  me.     How  then  do  I 
Persist  in  living?     Is  that  what  you  ask? 
If  so,  let  my  appearance  be  for  you 
No  living  answer ;  for  Time  writes  of  death 
On  men  before  they  die,  and  what  you  see 
Is  not  the  man.     The  man  that  you  see  not — 
The  man  within  the  man — is  most  alive ; 
Though  hatred  would  have  ended,  long  ago, 
The  bane  of  his  activities.    I  have  lived, 
Because  the  faith  within  me  that  is  life 
Endures  to  live,  and  shall,  till  soon  or  late, 
Death,  like  a  friend  unseen,  shall  say  to  me 
My  toil  is  over  and  my  work  begun. 

How  often,  and  how  many  a  time  again, 
Have  I  said  I  should  be  with  you  in  Rome ! 
He  who  is  always  coming  never  comes, 
Or  comes  too  late,  you  may  have  told  yourselves; 
And  I  may  tell  you  now  that  after  me, 
Whether  I  stay  for  little  or  for  long, 
The  wolves  are  coming.     Have  an  eye  for  them, 
And  a  more  careful  ear  for  their  confusion 
Than  you  need  have  much  longer  for  the  sound 
Of  what  I  tell  you — should  I  live  to  say 
More  than  I  say  to  Caesar.     What  I  know 
[16] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

Is  down  for  you  to  read  in  what  is  written ; 
And  if  I  cloud  a  little  with  my  own 
Mortality  the  gleam  that  is  immortal, 
I  do  it  only  because  I  am  I — 
Being  on  earth  and  of  it,  in  so  far 
As  time  flays  yet  the  remnant.     This  you  know ; 
And  if  I  sting  men,  as  I  do  sometimes, 
With  a  sharp  word  that  hurts,  it  is  because 
Man 's  habit  is  to  feel  before  he  sees ; 
And  I  am  of  a  race  that  feels.     Moreover, 
The  world  is  here  for  what  is  not  yet  here 
For  more  than  are  a  few ;  and  even  in  Rome, 
Where  men  are  so  enamored  of  the  Cross 
That  fame  has  echoed,  and  increasingly, 
The  music  of  your  love  and  of  your  faith 
To  foreign  ears  that  are  as  far  away 
As  Antioch  and  Haran,  yet  I  wonder 
How  much  of  love  you  know,  and  if  your  faith 
Be  the  shut  fruit  of  words.     If  so,  remember 
Words  are  but  shells  unfilled.     Jews  have  at  least 
A  Law  to  make  them  sorry  they  were  born 
If  they  go  long  without  it ;  and  these  Gentiles, 
For  the  first  time  in  shrieking  history, 
Have  love  and  law  together,  if  so  they  will, 
For  their  defense  and  their  immunity 
In  these  last  days.     Rome,  if  I  know  the  name, 
Will  have  anon  a  crown  of  thorns  and  fire 
Made  ready  for  the  wreathing  of  new  masters, 
Of  whom  we  are  appointed,  you  and  I, — 
[17] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

And  you  are  still  to  be  when  I  am  gone, 
Should  I  go  presently.     Let  the  word  fall, 
Meanwhile,  upon  the  dragon-ridden  field 
Of  circumstance,  either  to  live  or  die ; 
Concerning  which  there  is  a  parable, 
Made  easy  for  the  comfort  and  attention 
Of  those  who  preach,  fearing  they  preach  in  vain. 
You  are  to  plant,  and  then  to  plant  again 
Where  you  have  gathered,  gathering  as  you  go ; 
For  you  are  in  the  fields  that  are  eternal, 
And  you  have  not  the  burden  of  the  Lord 
Upon  your  mortal  shoulders.     What  you  have 
Is  a  light  yoke,  made  lighter  by  the  wearing, 
Till  it  shall  have  the  wonder  and  the  weight 
Of  a  clear  jewel,  shining  with  a  light 
Wherein  the  sun  and  all  the  fiery  stars 
May  soon  be  fading.    When  Gamaliel  said 
That  if  they  be  of  men  these  things  are  nothing, 
But  if  they  be  of  God  they  are  for  none 
To  overthrow,  he  spoke  as  a  good  Jew, 
And  one  who  stayed  a  Jew ;  and  he  said  all. 
And  you  know,  by  the  temper  of  your  faith, 
How  far  the  fire  is  in  you  that  I  felt 
Before  I  knew  Damascus.     A  word  here, 
Or  there,  or  not  there,  or  not  anywhere, 
Is  not  the  Word  that  lives  and  is  the  life ; 
And  you,  therefore,  need  weary  not  yourselves 
With  jealous  aches  of  others.     If  the  world 
[181 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

Were  not  a  world  of  aches  and  innovations, 
Attainment  would  have  no  more  joy  of  it. 
There  will  be  creeds  and  schisms,  creeds  in  creeds, 
And  schisms  in  schisms ;  myriads  will  be  done 
To  death  because  a  farthing  has  two  sides, 
And  is  at  last  a  farthing.     Telling  you  this, 
I,  who  bid  men  to  live,  appeal  to  Caesar. 
Once  I  had  said  the  ways  of  God  were  dark, 
Meaning  by  that  the  dark  ways  of  the  Law. 
Such  is  the  glory  of  our  tribulations ; 
For  the  Law  kills  the  flesh  that  kills  the  Law, 
And  we  are  then  alive.    We  have  eyes  then ; 
And  we  have  then  the  Cross  between  two  worlds — 
To  guide  us,  or  to  blind  us  for  a  time, 
Till  we  have  eyes  indeed.     The  fire  that  smites 
A  few  on  highways,  changing  all  at  once, 
Is  not  for  all.     The  power  that  holds  the  world 
Away  from  God  that  holds  himself  away — 
Farther  away  than  all  your  works  and  words 
Are  like  to  fly  without  the  wings  of  faith — 
Was  not,  nor  ever  shall  be,  a  small  hazard 
Enlivening  the  ways  of  easy  leisure 
Or  the  cold  road  of  knowledge.    When  our  eyes 
Have  wisdom,  we  see  more  than  we  remember ; 
And  the  old  world  of  our  captivities 
May  then  become  a  smitten  glimpse  of  ruin, 
Like  one  where  vanished  hewers  have  had  their  day 
Of  wrath  on  Lebanon.     Before  we  see, 

[19] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

Meanwhile,  we  suffer;  and  I  come  to  you, 
At  last,  through  many  storms  and  through  much 
night. 

Yet  whatsoever  I  have  undergone, 

My  keepers  in  this  instance  are  not  hard. 

But  for  the  chance  of  an  ingratitude, 

I  might  indeed  be  curious  of  their  mercy, 

And  fearful  of  their  leisure  while  I  wait, 

A  few  leagues  out  of  Rome.     Men  go  to  Rome, 

Not  always  to  return — but  not  that  now. 

Meanwhile,  I  seem  to  think  you  look  at  me 

With  eyes  that  are  at  last  more  credulous 

Of  my  identity.    You  remark  in  me 

No  sort  of  leaping  giant,  though  some  words 

Of  mine  to  you  from  Corinth  may  have  leapt 

A  little  through  your  eyes  into  your  soul. 

I  trust  they  were  alive,  and  are  alive 

Today;  for  there  be  none  that  shall  indite 

So  much  of  nothing  as  the  man  of  words 

Who  writes  in  the  Lord's  name  for  his  name's  sake 

And  has  not  in  his  blood  the  fire  of  time 

To  warm  eternity.    Let  such  a  man — 

If  once  the  light  is  in  him  and  endures — 

Content  himself  to  be  the  general  man, 

Set  free  to  sift  the  decencies  and  thereby 

To  learn,  except  he  be  one  set  aside 

For  sorrow,  more  of  pleasure  than  of  pain ; 

Though  if  his  light  be  not  the  light  indeed, 

[20] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

But  a  brief  shine  that  never  really  was, 

And  fails,  leaving  him  worse  than  where  he  was, 

Then  shall  he  be  of  all  men  destitute. 

And  here  were  not  an  issue  for  much  ink, 

Or  much  offending  faction  among  scribes. 

The  Kingdom  is  within  us,  we  are  told ; 

And  when  I  say  to  you  that  we  possess  it 

In  such  a  measure  as  faith  makes  it  ours, 

I  say  it  with  a  sinner's  privilege 

Of  having  seen  and  heard,  and  seen  again, 

After  a  darkness;  and  if  I  affirm 

To  the  last  hour  that  faith  affords  alone 

The  Kingdom  entrance  and  an  entertainment, 

I  do  not  see  myself  as  one  who  says 

To  man  that  he  shall  sit  with  folded  hands 

Against  the  Coming.     If  I  be  anything, 

I  move  a  driven  agent  among  my  kind, 

Establishing  by  the  faith  of  Abraham, 

And  by  the  grace  of  their  necessities, 

The  clamoring  word  that  is  the  word  of  life 

Nearer  than  heretofore  to  the  solution 

Of  their  tomb-serving  doubts.     If  I  have  loosed 

A  shaft  of  language  that  has  flown  sometimes 

A  little  higher  than  the  hearts  and  heads 

Of  nature's  minions,  it  will  yet  be  heard, 

Like  a  new  song  that  waits  for  distant  ears. 

I  cannot  be  the  man  that  I  am  not ; 

And  while  I  own  that  earth  is  my  affliction, 

[21] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

I  am  a  man  of  earth,  who  says  not  all 

To  all  alike.     That  were  impossible, 

Even  as  it  were  so  that  He  should  plant 

A  larger  garden  first.     But  you  today 

Are  for  the  larger  sowing ;  and  your  seed, 

A  little  mixed,  will  have,  as  He  foresaw, 

The  foreign  harvest  of  a  wider  growth, 

And  one  without  an  end.     Many  there  are, 

And  are  to  be,  that  shall  partake  of  it, 

Though  none  may  share  it  with  an  understanding 

That  is  not  his  alone.     "We  are  all  alone ; 

And  yet  we  are  all  parcelled  of  one  order — 

Jew,  Gentile,  or  barbarian  in  the  dark 

Of  wildernesses  that  are  not  so  much 

As  names  yet  in  a  book.     And  there  are  many, 

Finding  at  last  that  words  are  not  the  Word, 

And  finding  only  that,  will  flourish  aloft, 

Like  heads  of  captured  Pharisees  on  pikes, 

Our  contradictions  and  discrepancies; 

And  there  are  many  more  will  hang  themselves 

Upon  the  letter,  seeing  not  in  the  Word 

The  friend  of  all  who  fail,  and  in  their  faith 

A  sword  of  excellence  to  cut  them  down. 

As  long  as  there  are  glasses  that  are  dark — 
And  there  are  many — we  see  darkly  through  them ; 
All  which  have  I  conceded  and  set  down 
In  words  that  have  no  shadow.    What  is  dark 
Is  dark,  and  we  may  not  say  otherwise ; 
[22] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

Yet  what  may  be  as  dark  as  a  lost  fire 

For  one  of  us,  may  still  be  for  another 

A  coming  gleam  across  the  gulf  of  ages, 

And  a  way  home  from  shipwreck  to  the  shore; 

And  so,  through  pangs  and  ills  and  desperations, 

There  may  be  light  for  all.     There  shall  be  light. 

As  much  as  that,  you  know.    You  cannot  say 

This  woman  or  that  man  will  be  the  next 

On  whom  it  falls;  you  are  not  here  for  that. 

Your  ministration  is  to  be  for  others 

The  firing  of  a  rush  that  may  for  them 

Be  soon  the  fire  itself.     The  few  at  first 

Are  fighting  for  the  multitude  at  last ; 

Therefore  remember  what  Gamaliel  said 

Before  you,  when  the  sick  were  lying  down 

In  streets  all  night  for  Peter's  passing  shadow. 

Fight,  and  say  what  you  feel ;  say  more  than  words. 

Give  men  to  know  that  even  their  days  of  earth 

To  come  are  more  than  ages  that  are  gone. 

Say  what  you  feel,  while  you  have  time  to  say  it. 

Eternity  will  answer  for  itself, 

Without  your  intercession ;  yet  the  way 

For  many  is  a  long  one,  and  as  dark, 

Meanwhile,  as  dreams  of  hell.     See  not  your  toil 

Too  much,  and  if  I  be  away  from  you, 

Think  of  me  as  a  brother  to  yourselves, 

Of  many  blemishes.     Beware  of  stoics, 

And  give  your  left  hand  to  grammarians ; 

And  when  you  seem,  as  many  a  time  you  may, 

[23] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

To  have  no  other  friend  than  hope,  remember 
That  you  are  not  the  first,  or  yet  the  last. 

The  best  of  life,  until  we  see  beyond 
The  shadows  of  ourselves  (and  they  are  less 
Than  even  the  blindest  of  indignant  eyes 
"Would  have  them)  is  in  what  we  do  not  know. 
Make,  then,  for  all  your  fears  a  place  to  sleep 
With  all  your  faded  sins ;  nor  think  yourselves 
Egregious  and  alone  for  your  defects 
Of  youth  and  yesterday.     I  was  young  once ; 
And  there's  a  question  if  you  played  the  fool 
With  a  more  fervid  and  inherent  zeal 
Than  I  have  in  my  story  to  remember, 
Or  gave  your  necks  to  folly's  conquering  foot, 
Or  flung  yourselves  with  an  unstudied  aim, 
Less  frequently  than  I.     Never  mind  that. 
Man's  little  house  of  days  will  hold  enough, 
Sometimes,  to  make  him  wish  it  were  not  his, 
But  it  will  not  hold  all.     Things  that  are  dead 
Are  best  without  it,  and  they  own  their  death 
By  virtue  of  their  dying.     Let  them  go, — 
But  think  you  not  the  world  is  ashes  yet, 
And  you  have  all  the  fire.     The  world  is  here 
Today,  and  it  may  not  be  gone  tomorrow ; 
For  there  are  millions,  and  there  may  be  more, 
To  make  in  turn  a  various  estimation 
Of  its  old  ills  and  ashes,  and  the  traps 
Of  its  apparent  wrath.    Many  with  ears 
[24] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

That  hear  not  yet,  shall  have  ears  given  to  them, 
And  then  they  shall  hear  strangely.    Many  with 

eyes 

That  are  incredulous  of  the  Mystery 
Shall  yet  be  driven  to  feel,  and  then  to  read 
Where  language  has  an  end  and  is  a  veil, 
Not  woven  of  our  words.     Many  that  hate 
Their  kind  are  soon  to  know  that  without  love 
Their  faith  is  but  the  perjured  name  of  nothing. 
I  that  have  done  some  hating  in  my  time 
See  now  no  time  for  hate ;  I  that  have  left, 
Fading  behind  me  like  familiar  lights 
That  are  to  shine  no  more  for  my  returning, 
Home,  friends,  and  honors, — I  that  have  lost  all  else 
For  wisdom,  and  the  wealth  of  it,  say  now 
To  you  that  out  of  wisdom  has  come  love, 
That  measures  and  is  of  itself  the  measure 
Of  works  and  hope  and  faith.    Your  longest  hours 
Are  not  so  long  that  you  may  torture  them 
And  harass  not  yourselves ;  and  the  last  days 
Are  on  the  way  that  you  prepare  for  them, 
And  was  prepared  for  you,  here  in  a  world 
Where  you  have  sinned  and  suffered,  striven  and 

seen. 

If  you  be  not  so  hot  for  counting  them 
Before  they  come  that  you  consume  yourselves, 
Peace  may  attend  you  all  in  these  last  days — 
And  me,  as  well  as  you.     Yes,  even  in  Rome. 
Well,  I  Lave  talked  and  rested,  though  I  fear 

[25] 


THE  THREE  TAVERNS 

My  rest  has  not  been  yours ;  in  which  event, 

Forgive  one  who  is  only  seven  leagues 

From  Cagsar.    When  I  told  you  I  should  come, 

I  did  not  see  myself  the  criminal 

You  contemplate,  for  seeing  beyond  the  Law 

That  which  the  Law  saw  not.     But  this,  indeed, 

Was  good  of  you,  and  I  shall  not  forget ; 

No,  I  shall  not  forget  you  came  so  far 

To  meet  a  man  so  dangerous.     Well,  farewell. 

They  come  to  tell  me  I  am  going  now — 

With  them.     I  hope  that  we  shall  meet  again, 

But  none  may  say  what  he  shall  find  in  Rome. 


[26] 


DEMOS 
I 

ALL  you  that  are  enamored  of  my  name 

And  least  intent  on  what  most  I  require, 
Beware ;  for  my  design  and  your  desire, 

Deplorably,  are  not  as  yet  the  same. 

Beware,  I  say,  the  failure  and  the  shame 

Of   losing   that    for   which   you   now   aspire 
So  blindly,  and  of  hazarding  entire 

The  gift  that  I  was  bringing  when  I  came. 

Give  as  I  will,  I  cannot  give  you  sight 

Whereby  to  see  that  with  you  there  are  some 
To  lead  you,  and  be  led.     But  they  are  dumb 

Before  the  wrangling  and  the  shrill  delight 
Of  your  deliverance  that  has  not  come, 

And  shall  not,  if  I  fail  you — as  I  might. 


[27] 


DEMOS 
II 

So  little  have  you  seen  of  what  awaits 
Your  fevered  glimpse  of  a  democracy 
Confused  and  foiled  with  an  equality 

Not  equal  to  the  envy  it  creates, 

That  you  see  not  how  near  you  are  the  gates 
Of  an  old  king  who  listens  fearfully 
To  you  that  are  outside  and  are  to  be 

The  noisy  lords  of  imminent  estates. 

Bather  be  then  your  prayer  that  you  shall  have 
Your  kingdom  undishonored.     Having  all, 
See  not  the  great  among  you  for  the  small, 

But  hear  their  silence ;  for  the  few  shall  save 
The  many,  or  the  many  are  to  fall — 

Still  to  be  wrangling  in  a  noisy  grave. 


T28] 


THE  FLYING  DUTCHMAN 

UNYIELDING  in  the  pride  of  his  defiance, 

Afloat  with  none  to  serve  or  to  command, 

Lord  of  himself  at  last,  and  all  by  Science, 
He  seeks  the  Vanished  Land. 

Alone,  by  the  one  light  of  his  one  thought, 
He  steers  to  find  the  shore  from  which  we  came, — 

Fearless  of  in  what  coil  he  may  be  caught 
On  seas  that  have  no  name. 

Into  the  night  he  sails ;  and  after  night 
There  is  a  dawning,  though  there  be  no  sun; 

Wherefore,  with  nothing  but  himself  in  sight, 
Unsighted,  he  sails  on. 

At  last  there  is  a  lifting  of  the  cloud 

Between  the  flood  before  him  and  the  sky; 

And  then — though  he  may  curse  the  Power  aloud 
That  has  no  power  to  die — 

He  steers  himself  away  from  what  is  haunted 
By  the  old  ghost  of  what  has  been  before, — 

Abandoning,  as  always,  and  undaunted, 
One  fog-walled  island  more. 

[29] 


TACT 

OBSERVANT  of  the  way  she  told 

So  much  of  what  was  true, 
No  vanity  could  long  withhold 

Regard  that  was  her  due : 
She  spared  him  the  familiar  guile, 

So  easily  achieved,      , 
That  only  made  a  man  to  smile 

And  left  him  undeceived. 

Aware  that  all  imagining 

Of  more  than  what  she  meant 
Would  urge   an  end  of  everything, 

He  stayed ;  and  when  he  went, 
They  parted  with  a  merry  word 

That  was  to  him  as  light 
As  any  that  was  ever  heard 

Upon  a  starry  night. 

She  smiled  a  little,  knowing  well 

That  he  would  not  remark 
The  ruins  of  a  day  that  fell 

Around  her  in  the  dark: 
He  saw  no  ruins  anywhere, 

Nor  fancied  there  were  scars 
On  anyone  who  lingered  there, 

Alone  below  the  stars. 

[30] 


ON  THE  WAY 

(PHILADELPHIA,  1794) 

NOTE. —  The  following  imaginary  dialogue  between  Alex 
ander  Hamilton  and  Aaron  Burr,  which  is  not  based  upon 
any  specific  incident  in  American  history,  may  be  supposed 
to  have  occurred  a  few  months  previous  to  Hamilton's  re 
tirement  from  Washington's  Cabinet  in  1795  and  a  few 
years  before  the  political  ingenuities  of  Burr — who  has 
been  characterized,  without  much  exaggeration,  as  the  in 
ventor  of  American  politics — began  to  be  conspicuously 
formidable  to  the  Federalists.  These  activities  on  the  part 
of  Burr  resulted,  as  the  reader  will  remember,  in  the  Burr- 
Jefferson  tie  for  the  Presidency  in  1800,  and  finally  in  the 
Burr-Hamilton  duel  at  Weehawken  in  1804. 

BURR 

HAMILTON,  if  he  rides  you  down,  remember 
That  I  was  here  to  speak,  and  so  to  save 
Your  fabric  from  catastrophe.     That's  good; 
For  I  perceive  that  you  observe  him  also. 
A  President,  a-riding  of  his  horse, 
May  dust  a  General  and  be  forgiven ; 
But  why  be  dusted — when  we're  all  alike, 
All  equal,  and  all  happy.     Here  he  comes — 
And  there  he  goes.     And  we,  by  your  new  patent, 
Would  seem  to  be  two  kings  here  by  the  wayside, 

[31] 


ON  THE  WAY 

With  our  two  hats  off  to  his  Excellency. 
Why  not  his  Majesty,  and  done  with  it? 
Forgive  me  if  I  shook  your  meditation, 
But  you  that  weld  our  credit  should  have  eyes 
To  see  what 's  coming.     Bury  me  first  if  /  do. 

HAMILTON 

There's  always  in  some  pocket  of  your  brain 

A  care  for  me ;  wherefore  my  gratitude 

For  your  attention  is  commensurate 

With  your  concern.    Yes,  Burr,  we  are  two  kings ; 

We  are  as  royal  as  two  ditch-diggers ; 

But  owe  me  not  your  sceptre.     These  are  the  days 

When  first  a  few  seem  all ;  but  if  we  live, 

We  may  again  be  seen  to  be  the  few 

That  we  have  always  been.     These  are  the  days 

When  men  forget  the  stars,  and  are  forgotten. 

BURR 

But   why  forget  them?    They're  the   same   that 

winked 

Upon  the  world  when  Alcibiades 
Cut  off  his  dog's  tail  to  induce  distinction. 
There  are  dogs  yet,  and  Alcibiades 
Is  not  forgotten. 

HAMILTON 

Yes,  there  are  dogs  enough, 
God  knows ;  and  I  can  hear  them  in  my  dreams. 

[32] 


ON  THE  WAY 

BURR 

Never  a  doubt.    But  what  you  hear  the  most 
Is  your  new  music,  something  out  of  tune 
With  your  intention.     How  in  the  name  of  Cain, 
I  seem  to  hear  you  ask,  are  men  to  dance, 
When  all  men  are  musicians.     Tell  me  that, 
I  hear  you  saying,  and  I'll  tell  you  the  name 
Of  Samson's  mother.     But  why  shroud  yourself 
Before  the  coffin  comes?    For  all  you  know, 
The  tree  that  is  to  fall  for  your  last  house 
Is  now  a  sapling.     You  may  have  to  wait 
So  long  as  to  be  sorry ;  though  I  doubt  it, 
For  you  are  not  at  home  in  your  new  Eden 
Where  chilly  whispers  of  a  likely  frost 
Accumulate  already  in  the  air. 
I  think  a  touch  of  ermine,  Hamilton, 
Would  be  for  you  in  your  autumnal  mood 
A  pleasant  sort  of  warmth  along  the  shoulders. 

HAMILTON 

If  so  it  is  you  think,  you  may  as  well 

Give  over  thinking.     We  are  done  with  ermine. 

What  I  fear  most  is  not  the  multitude, 

But  those  who  are  to  loop  it  with  a  string 

That  has  one  end  in  France  and  .one  end  here. 

I  'm  not  so  fortified  with  observation 

That  I  could  swear  that  more  than  half  a  score 

Among  us  who  see  lightning  see  that  ruin 

[33] 


ON  THE  WAY 

Is  not  the  work  of  thunder.     Since  the  world 
Was  ordered,  there  was  never  a  long  pause 
For  caution  between  doing  and  undoing. 

BURR 

Go  on,  sir ;  my  attention  is  a  trap 
Set  for  the  catching  of  all  compliments 
To  Monticello,  and  all  else  abroad 
That  has  a  name  or  an  identity. 

HAMILTON 

I  leave  to  you  the  names — there  are  too  many ; 

Yet  one  there  is  to  sift  and  hold  apart, 

As  now  I  see.     There  comes  at  last  a  glimmer 

That  is  not  always  clouded,  or  too  late. 

But  I  was  near  and  young,  and  had  the  reins 

To  play  with  while  he  manned  a  team  so  raw 

That  only  God  knows  where  the  end  had  been 

Of  all  that  riding  without  Washington. 

There  was  a  nation  in  the  man  who  passed  us, 

If  there  was  not  a  world.     I  may  have  driven 

Since  then  some  restive  horses,  and  alone, 

And  through  a  splashing  of  abundant  mud; 

But  he  who  made  the  dust  that  sets  you  on 

To  coughing,  made  the  road.    Now  it  seems  dry, 

And  in  a  measure  safe. 


[54] 


ON  THE  WAY 

BURR 

Here's  a  new  tune 

From  Hamilton.     Has  your  caution  all  at  once, 
And  over  night,  grown  till  it  wrecks  the  cradle  f 
I  have  forgotten  what  my  father  said 
When  I  was  born,  but  there 's  a  rustling  of  it 
Among  my  memories,  and  it  makes  a  noise 
About  as  loud  as  all  that  I  have  held 
And  fondled  heretofore  of  your  same  caution. 
But  that's  affairs,  not  feelings.     If  our  friends 
Guessed  half  we  say  of  them,  our  enemies 
Would  itch  in  our  friends'  jackets.     Howsoever, 
The  world  is  of  a  sudden  on  its  head, 
And  all  are  spilled — unless  you  cling  alone 
With  Washington.    Ask  Adams  about  that. 

HAMILTON 

Well  not  ask  Adams  about  anything. 
We  fish  for  lizards  when  we  choose  to  ask 
For  what  we  know  already  is  not  coming, 
And  we  must  eat  the  answer.    Where's  the  use 
Of  asking  when  this  man  says  everything, 
With  all  his  tongues  of  silence  ? 

BURR 

I  dare  say. 
I  dare  say,  but  I  won't.    One  of  those  tongues 

[35] 


ON  THE  WAY 

I  '11  borrow  for  the  nonce.     He  '11  never  miss  it. 
We  mean  his  Western  Majesty,  King  George. 

HAMILTON 

I  mean  the  man  who  rode  by  on  his  horse. 
I'll  beg  of  you  the  meed  of  your  indulgence 
If  I  should  say  this  planet  may  have  done 
A  deal  of  weary  whirling  when  at  last, 
If  ever,  Time  shall  aggregate  again 
A  majesty  like  his  that  has  no  name. 

BURR 

Then  you  concede  his  Majesty?    That's  good, 
And  what  of  yours?    Here  are  two  majesties. 
Favor  the  Left  a  little,  Hamilton, 
Or  you  '11  be  floundering  in  the  ditch  that  waits 
For  riders  who  forget  where  they  are  riding. 
If  we  and  France,  as  you  anticipate, 
Must  eat  each  other,  what  Caesar,  if  not  yourself, 
Do  you  see  for  the  master  of  the  feast? 
There  may  be  a  place  waiting  on  your  head 
For  laurel  thick  as  Nero's.    You  don't  know. 
I  have  not  crossed  your  glory,  though  I  might 
If  I  saw  thrones  at  auction. 

HAMILTON 

Yes,  you  might. 

If  war  is  on  the  way,  I  shall  be — here ; 
And  I've  no  vision  of  your  distant  heels. 

[36] 


ON  THE  WAY 

BURR 

I  see  that  I  shall  take  an  inference 
To  bed  with  me  to-night  to  keep  me  warm. 
I  thank  you,  Hamilton,  and  I  approve 
Your  fealty  to  the  aggregated  greatness 
Of  him  you  lean  on  while  he  leans  on  you. 

HAMILTON 

This  easy  phrasing  is  a  game  of  yours 
That  you  may  win  to  lose.     I  beg  your  pardon, 
But  you  that  have  the  sight  will  not  employ 
The  will  to  see  with  it.     If  you  did  so, 
There  might  be  fewer  ditches  dug  for  others 
In  your  perspective ;  and  there  might  be  fewer 
Contemporary  motes  of  prejudice 
Between  you  and  the  man  who  made  the  dust. 
Call  him  a  genius  or  a  gentleman, 
A  prophet  or  a  builder,  or  what  not, 
But  hold  your  disposition  off  the  balance, 
And  weigh  him  in  the  light.     Once  (I  believe 
I  tell  you  nothing  new  to  your  surmise, 
Or  to  the  tongues  of  towns  and  villages) 
I  nourished  with  an  adolescent  fancy — 
Surely  forgivable  to  you,  my  friend — 
An  innocent  and  amiable  conviction 
That  I  was,  by  the  grace  of  honest  fortune, 
A  savior  at  his  elbow  through  the  war, 
Where  I  might  have  observed,  more  than  I  did, 
[37] 


ON  THE  WAY 

Patience  and  wholesome  passion.    I  was  there, 

And  for  such  honor  I  gave  nothing  worse 

Than  some  advice  at  which  he  may  have  smiled. 

I  must  have  given  a  modicum  besides, 

Or  the  rough  interval  between  those  days 

And  these  would  never  have  made  for  me  my 

friends, 

Or  enemies.     I  should  be  something  somewhere — 
I  say  not  what — but  I  should  not  be  here 
If  he  had  not  been  there.     Possibly,  too, 
You  might  not— or  that  Quaker  with  his  cane. 

BURR 

Possibly,  too,  I  should.    When  the  Almighty 
Rides  a  white  horse,  I  fancy  we  shall  know  it. 

HAMILTON 

It  was  a  man,  Burr,  that  was  in  my  mind ; 
No  god,  or  ghost,  or  demon — only  a  man: 
A  man  whose  occupation  is  the  need 
Of  those  who  would  not  feel  it  if  it  bit  them ; 
And  one  who  shapes  an  age  while  he  endures 
The  pin  pricks  of  inferiorities ; 
A  cautious  man,  because  he  is  but  one; 
A  lonely  man,  because  he  is  a  thousand. 
No  marvel  you  are  slow  to  find  in  him 
The  genius  that  is  one  spark  or  is  nothing : 
His  genius  is  a  flame  that  he  must  hold 
So  far  above  the  common  heads  of  men 
[38] 


ON  THE  WAY 

That  they  may  view  him  only  through  the  mist 
Of  their  defect,  and  wonder  what  he  is. 
It  seems  to  me  the  mystery  that  is  in  him 
That  makes  him  only  more  to  me  a  man 
Than  any  other  I  have  ever  known. 

BURR 

I  grant  you  that  his  worship  is  a  man. 

I'm  not  so  much  at  home  with  mysteries, 

May  be,  as  you — so  leave  him  with  his  fire : 

God  knows  that  I  shall  never  put  it  out. 

He  has  not  made  a  cripple  of  himself 

In  his  pursuit  of  me,  though  I  have  heard 

His  condescension  honors  me  with  parts. 

Parts  make  a  whole,  if  we've  enough  of  them; 

And  once  I  figured  a  sufficiency 

To  be  at  least  an  atom  in  the  annals 

Of  your  republic.     But  I  must  have  erred. 

HAMILTON 

You  smile  as  if  your  spirit  lived  at  ease 
With  error.     I  should  not  have  named  it  so, 
Failing  assent  from  you;  nor,  if  I  did, 
Should  I  be  so  complacent  in  my  skill 
To  comb  the  tangled  language  of  the  people 
As  to  be  sure  of  anything  in  these  days. 
Put  that  much  in  account  with  modesty. 


[39] 


ON  THE  WAY 

BURR 

What  in  the  name  of  Ahab,  Hamilton, 
Have  you,  in  the  last  region  of  your  dreaming, 
To  do  with  ' '  people ' '  ?    You  may  be  the  devil 
In  your  dead-reckoning  of  what  reefs  and  shoals 
Are  waiting  on  the  progress  of  our  ship 
Unless  you  steer  it,  but  you'll  find  it  irksome 
Alone  there  in  the  stern;  and  some  warm  day 
There'll  be  an  inland  music  in  the  rigging, 
And  afterwards  on  deck.    I'm  not  affined 
Or  favored  overmuch  at  Monticello, 
But  there's  a  mighty  swarming  of  new  bees 
About  the  premises,  and  all  have  wings. 
If  you  hear  something  buzzing  before  long, 
Be  thoughtful  how  you  strike,  remembering  also 
There  was  a  fellow  Naboth  had  a  vineyard, 
And  Ahab  cut  his  hair  off  and  went  softly. 

HAMILTON 

I  don't  remember  that  he  cut  his  hair  off. 
BURR 

Somehow  I  rather  fancy  that  he  did. 
If  so,  it 's  in  the  Book ;  and  if  not  so, 
He  did  the  rest,  and  did  it  handsomely. 

HAMILTON 

Commend  yourself  to  Ahab  and  his  ways 
If  they  inveigle  you  to  emulation ; 

[40] 


ON  THE  WAY 

But  where,  if  I  may  ask  it,  are  yon  tending 
With  your  invidious  wielding  of  the  Scriptures? 
You  call  to  mind  an  eminent  archangel 
Who  fell  to  make  him  famous.    Would  you  fall 
So  far  as  he,  to  be  so  far  remembered  ? 

BURR 

Before  I  fall  or  rise,  or  am  an  angel, 

I  shall  acquaint  myself  a  little  further 

With  our  new  land's  new  language,  which  is  not — 

Peace  to  your  dreams — an  idiom  to  your  liking. 

I'm  wondering  if  a  man  may  always  know 

How  old  a  man  may  be  at  thirty-seven; 

I  wonder  likewise  if  a  prettier  time 

Could  be  decreed  for  a  good  man  to  vanish 

Than  about  now  for  you,  before  you  fade, 

And  even  your  friends  are  seeing  that  you  have  had 

Your  cup  too  full  for  longer  mortal  triumph. 

Well,  you  have  had  enough,  and  had  it  young ; 

And  the  old  wine  is  nearer  to  the  lees 

Than  you  are  to  the  work  that  you  are  doing. 

HAMILTON 

When  does  this  philological  excursion 
Into  new  lands  and  languages  begin? 

BURR 

Anon — that  is,  already.    Only  Fortune 
Gave  me  this  afternoon  the  benefaction 

[41] 


ON  THE  WAY 

Of  your  blue  back,  which  I  for  love  pursued, 
And  in  pursuing-  may  have  saved  your  life — 
AJso  the  world  a  pounding  piece  of  news : 
Hamilton  bites  the  dust  of  Washington, 
Or  rather  of  his  horse.     For  you  alone, 
Or  for  your  fame,  I'd  wish  it  might  have  been 

HAMILTON 

Not  every  man  among  us  has  a  friend 

So  jealous  for  the  other's  fame.     How  long 

Are  you  to  diagnose  the  doubtful  case 

Of  Demos — and  what  for?     Have  you  a  sword 

For  some  new  Damocles  ?     If  it 's  for  me, 

I  have  lost  all  official  appetite, 

And  shall  have  faded,  after  January, 

Into  the  law.     I  'm  going  to  New  York. 

BUBB 

No  matter  where  you  are,  one  of  these  days 
I  shall  come  back  to  you  and  tell  you  something. 
This  Demos,  I  have  heard,  has  in  his  wrist 
A  pulse  that  no  two  doctors  have  as  yet 
Counted  and  found  the  same,  and  in  his  mouth 
A  tongue  that  has  the  like  alacrity 
For  saying  or  not  for  saying  what  most  it  is 
That  pullulates  in  his  ignoble  mind. 
One  of  these  days  I  shall  appear  again, 
To  tell  you  more  of  him  and  his  opinions ; 
I  shall  not  be  so  long  out  of  your  sight, 
[42] 


ON  THE  WAY 

Or  take  myself  so  far,  that  I  may  not, 

Like  Alcibiades,  come  back  again. 

He  went  away  to  Phrygia,  and  fared  ill. 

HAMILTON 

There's  an  example  in  Themistocles : 
He  went  away  to  Persia,  and  fared  well. 

BURR 

So  ?    Must  I  go  so  far  ?    And  if  so,  why  so  ? 
I  had  not  planned  it  so.    Is  this  the  road 
I  take?    If  so,  farewell. 

HAMILTON 
Quite  so.    Farewell. 


[43] 


JOHN  BROWN 

THOUGH  for  your  sake  I  would  not  have  you  now 
So  near  to  me  tonight  as  now  you  are, 
God  knows  how  much  a  stranger  to  my  heart 
Was  any  cold  word  that  I  may  have  written; 
And  you,  poor  woman  that  I  made  my  wife, 
You  have  had  more  of  loneliness,  I  fear, 
Than  I — though  I  have  been  the  most  alone, 
Even  when  the  most  attended.     So  it  was 
God  set  the  mark  of  his  inscrutable 
Necessity  on  one  that  was  to  grope, 
And  serve,  and  suffer,  and  withal  be  glad 
For  what  was  his,  and  is,  and  is  to  be, 
When  his  old  bones,  that  are  a  burden  now, 
Are  saying  what  the  man  who  carried  them 
Had  not  the  power  to  say.     Bones  in  a  grave, 
Cover  them  as  they  will  with  choking  earth, 
May  shout  the  truth  to  men  who  put  them  there, 
More  than  all  orators.     And  so,  my  dear, 
Since  you  have  cheated  wisdom  for  the  sake 
Of  sorrow,  let  your  sorrow  be  for  you, 
This  last  of  nights  before  the  last  of  days, 
The  lying  ghost  of  what  there  is  of  me 
That  is  the  most  alive.     There  is  no  death 

[44] 


JOHN  BROWN 

For  me  in  what  they  do.     Their  death  it  is 
They  should  heed  most  when  the  sun  comes  again 
To  make  them  solemn.     There  are  some  I  know 
Whose  eyes  will  hardly  see  their  occupation, 
For  tears  in  them — and  all  for  one  old  man ; 
For  some  of  them  will  pity  this  old  man, 
Who  took  upon  himself  the  work  of  God 
Because  he  pitied  millions.    That  will  be 
For  them,  I  fancy,  their  compassionate 
Best  way  of  saying  what  is  best  in  them 
To  say;  for  they  can  say  no  more  than  that, 
And  they  can  do  no  more  than  what  the  dawn 
Of  one  more  day  shall  give  them  light  enough 
To  do.    But  there  are  many  days  to  be, 
And  there  are  many  men  to  give  their  blood, 
As  I  gave  mine  for  them.    May  they  come  soon ! 

May  they  come  soon,  I  say.    And  when  they  come, 
May  all  that  I  have  said  unheard  be  heard, 
Proving  at  last,  or  maybe  not — no  matter — 
"What  sort  of  madness  was  the  part  of  me 
That  made  me  strike,  whether  I  found  the  mark 
Or  missed  it.    Meanwhile,  I've  a  strange  content, 
A  patience,  and  a  vast  indifference 
To  what  men  say  of  me  and  what  men  fear 
To  say.     There  was  a  work  to  be  begun, 
And  when  the  Voice,  that  I  have  heard  so  long, 
Announced  as  in  a  thousand  silences 
An  end  of  preparation,  I  began 
[45] 


JOHN  BROWN 

The  coming  work  of  death  which  is  to  be, 
That  life  may  be.     There  is  no  other  way 
Than  the  old  way  of  war  for  a  new  land 
That  will  not  know  itself  and  is  tonight 
A  stranger  to  itself,  and  to  the  world 
A  more  prodigious  upstart  among  states 
Than  I  was  among  men,  and  so  shall  be 
Till  they  are  told  and  told,  and  told  again ; 
For  men  are  children,  waiting  to  be  told, 
And  most  of  them  are  children  all  their  lives. 
The  good  God  in  his  wisdom  had  them  so, 
That  now  and  then  a  madman  or  a  seer 
May  shake  them  out  of  their  complacency 
And  shame  them  into  deeds.     The  major  file 
See  only  what  their  fathers  may  have  seen, 
Or  may  have  said  they  saw  when  they  saw  nothing. 
I  do  not  say  it  matters  what  they  saw. 
Now  and  again  to  some  lone  soul  or  other 
God  speaks,  and  there  is  hanging  to  be  done, — 
As  once  there  was  a  burning  of  our  bodies 
Alive,  albeit  our  souls  were  sorry  fuel. 
But  now  the  fires  are  few,  and  we  are  poised 
Accordingly,  for  the  state's  benefit, 
A  few  still  minutes  between  heaven  and  earth. 
The  purpose  is,  when  they  have  seen  enough 
Of  what  it  is  that  they  are  not  to  see, 
To  pluck  me  as  an  unripe  fruit  of  treason, 
And  then  to  fling  me  back  to  the  same  earth 
Of  which  they  are,  as  I  suppose,  the  flower — 
[46] 


JOHN  BROWN 

Not  given  to  know  the  riper  fruit  that  waits 
For  a  more  comprehensive  harvesting. 

Yes,  may  they  come,  and  soon.     Again  I  say, 
May  they  come  soon ! — before  too  many  of  them 
Shall  be  the  bloody  cost  of  our  defection. 
When  hell  waits  on  the  dawn  of  a  new  state, 
Better  it  were  that  hell  should  not  wait  long, — 
Or  so  it  is  I  see  it  who  should  see 
As  far  or  farther  into  time  tonight 
Than  they  who  talk  and  tremble  for  me  now, 
Or  wish  me  to  those  everlasting  fires 
That  are  for  me  no  fear.     Too  many  fires 
Have  sought  me  out  and  seared  me  to  the  bone — 
Thereby,  for  all  I  know,  to  temper  me 
For  what  was  mine  to  do.     If  I  did  ill 
What  I  did  well,  let  men  say  I  was  mad ; 
Or  let  my  name  for  ever  be  a  question 
That  will  not  sleep  in  history.    What  men  say 
I  was  will  cool  no  cannon,  dull  no  sword, 
Invalidate  no  truth.    Meanwhile,  I  was ; 
And  the  long  train  is  lighted  that  shall  burn, 
Though  floods  of  wrath  may  drench  it,  and  hot  feet 
May  stamp  it  for  a  slight  time  into  smoke 
That  shall  blaze  up  again  with  growing  speed, 
Until  at  last  a  fiery  crash  will  come 
To  cleanse  and  shake  a  wounded  hemisphere, 
And  heal  it  of  a  long  malignity 
That  angry  time  discredits  and  disowns. 
[47] 


JOHN  BROWN 

Tonight  there  are  men  saying  many  things ; 

And  some  who  see  life  in  the  last  of  me 

Will  answer  first  the  coming  call  to  death ; 

For  death  is  what  is  coming,  and  then  life. 

I  do  not  say  again  for  the  dull  sake 

Of  speech  what  you  have  heard  me  say  before, 

But  rather  for  the  sake  of  all  I  am, 

And  all  God  made  of  me.    A  man  to  die 

As  I  do  must  have  done  some  other  work 

Than  man's  alone.     I  was  not  after  glory, 

But  there  was  glory  with  me,  like  a  friend, 

Throughout   those   crippling  years   when   friends 

were  few, 

And  fearful  to  be  known  by  their  own  names 
When  mine  was  vilified  for  their  approval. 
Yet  friends  they  are,  and  they  did  what  was  given 
Their  will  to  do ;  they  could  have  done  no  more. 
I  was  the  one  man  mad  enough,  it  seems, 
To  do  my  work ;  and  now  my  work  is  over. 
And  you,  my  dear,  are  not  to  mourn  for  me, 
Or  for  your  sons,  more  than  a  soul  should  mourn 
In  Paradise,  done  with  evil  and  with  earth. 
There  is  not  much  of  earth  in  what  remains 
For  you ;  and  what  there  may  be  left  of  it 
For  your  endurance  you  shall  have  at  last 
In  peace,  without  the  twinge  of  any  fear 
For  my  condition;  for  I  shall  be  done 
With  plans  and  actions  that  have  heretofore 

Made  your  days  long  and  your  nights  ominous 
[48] 


JOHN  BROWN 

With  darkness  and  the  many  distances 

That  were  between  us.    When  the  silence  comes, 

I  shall  in  faith  be  nearer  to  you  then 

Than  I  am  now  in  fact.    What  you  see  now 

Is  only  the  outside  of  an  old  man, 

Older  than  years  have  made  him.     Let  him  die, 

And  let  him  be  a  thing-  for  little  grief. 

There  was  a  time  for  service,  and  he  served ; 

And  there  is  no  more  time  for  anything 

But  a  short  gratefulness  to  those  who  gave 

Their  scared  allegiance  to  an  enterprise 

That  has  the  name  of  treason — which  will  serve 

As  well  as  any  other  for  the  present. 

There  are  some  deeds  of  men  that  have  no  names, 

And  mine  may  like  as  not  be  one  of  them. 

I  am  not  looking  far  for  names  tonight. 

The  King  of  Glory  was  without  a  name 

Until  men  gave  him  one ;  yet  there  He  was, 

Before  we  found  Him  and  affronted  Him 

With  numerous  ingenuities  of  evil, 

Of  which  one,  with  His  aid,  is  to  be  swept 

And  washed  out  of  the  world  with  fire  and  blood. 

Once  I  believed  it  might  have  come  to  pass 
With  a  small  cost  of  blood ;  but  I  was  dreaming — 
Dreaming  that  I  believed.     The  Voice  I  heard 
When  I  left  you  behind  me  in  the  north, — 
To  wait  there  and  to  wonder  and  grow  old 
Of  loneliness, — told  only  what  was  best, 

[49] 


JOHN  BROWN 

And  with  a  saving  vagueness,  I  should  know 
Till  I  knew  more.     And  had  I  known  even  then- 
After  grim  years  of  search  and  suffering, 
So  many  of  them  to  end  as  they  began — 
After  my  sickening  doubts  and  estimations 
Of  plans  abandoned  and  of  new  plans  vain — 
After  a  weary  delving  everywhere 
For  men  with  every  virtue  but  the  Vision — 
Could  I  have  known,  I  say,  before  I  left  you 
That  summer  morning,  all  there  was  to  know — 
Even  unto  the  last  consuming  word 
That  would  have  blasted  every  mortal  answer 
As  lightning  would  annihilate  a  leaf, 
I  might  have  trembled  on  that  summer  morning ; 
I  might  have  wavered ;  and  I  might  have  failed. 

And  there  are  many  among  men  today 
To  say  of  me  that  I  had  best  have  wavered. 
So  has  it  been,  so  shall  it  always  be, 
For  those  of  us  who  give  ourselves  to  die 
Before  we  are  so  parcelled  and  approved 
As  to  be  slaughtered  by  authority. 
"We  do  not  make  so  much  of  what  they  say 
As  they  of  what  our  folly  says  of  us ; 
They  give  us  hardly  time  enough  for  that, 
And  thereby  we  gain  much  by  losing  little. 
Few  are  alive  to-day  with  less  to  lose 
Than  I  who  tell  you  this,  or  more  to  gain ; 
And  whether  I  speak  as  one  to  be  destroyed 

[50] 


JOHN  BROWN 

For  no  good  end  outside  Ms  own  destruction, 
Time  shall  have  more  to  say  than  men  shall  hear 
Between  now  and  the  coming  of  that  harvest 
Which  is  to  come.    Before  it  comes,  I  go — 
By  the  short  road  that  mystery  makes  long 
For  man's  endurance  of  accomplishment. 
I  shall  have  more  to  say  when  I  am  dead. 


[51] 


THE  FALSE  GODS 

"WE  are  false  and  evanescent,  and  aware  of  our 

deceit, 
From  the  straw  that  is  our  vitals  to  the  clay  that 

is  our  feet. 
You  may  serve  us  if  you  must,  and  you  shall  have 

your  wage  of  ashes, — 
Though  arrears  due  thereafter  may  be  hard  for  you 

to  meet. 

"You  may  swear  that  we  are  solid,  you  may  say  that 

we  are  strong, 
But  we  know  that  we  are  neither  and  we  say  that 

you  are  wrong; 
You  may  find  an  easy  worship  in  acclaiming  our 

indulgence, 
But  your  large  admiration  of  us  now  is  not  for  long. 

"If  your  doom  is  to  adore  us  with  a  doubt  that's 

never  still, 
And  you  pray  to  see  our  faces — pray  in  earnest,  and 

you  will. 
You  may  gaze  at  us  and  live,  and  live  assured  of 

our  confusion: 

[52] 


THE  FALSE  GODS 

For  the  False  Gods  are  mortal,  and  are  made  for 
you  to  kill. 

"And  you  may  as  well  observe,  while  appre 
hensively  at  ease 

With  an  Art  that's  inorganic  and  is  anything  you 
please, 

That  anon  your  newest  ruin  may  lie  crumbling  un 
regarded, 

Like  an  old  shrine  forgotten  in  a  forest  of  new  trees. 

"Howsoever  like  no  other  be  the  mode  you  may 
employ, 

There 's  an  order  in  the  ages  for  the  ages  to  enjoy ; 

Though  the  temples  you  are  shaping  and  the  pas 
sions  you  are  singing 

Are  a  long  way  from  Athens  and  a  longer  way  from 
Troy. 

"When  we  promise  more  than  ever  of  what  never 

shall  arrive, 

And  you  seem  a  little  more  than  ordinarily  alive, 
Make  a  note  that  you  are  sure  you  understand  our 

obligations — 
For  there's  grief  always  auditing  where  two  and 

two  are  five. 

"There  was  this  for  us  to  say  and  there  was  this  for 
you  to  know, 

[53] 


THE  FALSE  GODS 

Though  it  humbles  and  it  hurts  us  when  we  have  to 

tell  you  so. 
If  you  doubt  the  only  truth  in  all  our  perjured 

composition, 
May  the  True  Gods  attend  you  and  forget  us  when 

we  go." 


[64] 


ARCHIBALD'S  EXAMPLE 

OLD  ARCHIBALD,  in  his  eternal  chair, 
Where  trespassers,  whatever  their  degree, 
Were  soon  frowned  out  again,  was  looking  off 
Across  the  clover  when  he  said  to  me: 

"My  green  hill  yonder,  where  the  sun  goes  down 
Without  a  scratch,  was  once  inhabited 
By  trees  that  injured  him — an  evil  trash 
That  made  a  cage,  and  held  him  while  he  bled. 

"Gone  fifty  years,  I  see  them  as  they  were 
Before  they  fell.     They  were  a  crooked  lot 
To  spoil  my  sunset,  and  I  saw  no  time 
In  fifty  years  for  crooked  things  to  rot. 

* '  Trees,  yes ;  but  not  a  service  or  a  joy 
To  God  or  man,  for  they  were  thieves  of  light. 
So  down  they  came.     Nature  and  I  looked  on, 
And  we  were  glad  when  they  were  out  of  sight. 

"Trees  are  like  men,  sometimes;  and  that  being  so, 
So  much  for  that. ' '    He  twinkled  in  his  chair, 
And  looked  across  the  clover  to  the  place 
That  he  remembered  when  the  trees  were  there. 

[55] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

1 '  Do  I  hear  them  ?     Yes,  I  hear  the  children  singing 

— and  what  of  it  ? 
Have  you  come  with  eyes  afire  to  find  me  now  and 

ask  me  that  ? 
If  I  were  not  their  father  and  if  you  were  not  their 

mother, 
We  might  believe  they  made  a  noise.  .  .  .  What  are 

you — driving  at ! ' ' 

' '  Well,  be  glad  that  you  can  hear  them,  and  be  glad 

they  are  so  near  us, — 
For  I  have  heard  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  they  were 

nearer  still. 
All  within  an  hour  it  is  that  I  have  heard  them 

calling, 
And  though  I  pray  for  them  to  cease,  I  know  they 

never  will ; 
For  their  music  on  my  heart,  though  you  may  freeze 

it,  will  fall  always, 

Like  summer  snow  that  never  melts  upon  a  moun 
tain-top. 
Do  you  hear  them?    Do  you  hear  them  overhead — 

the  children — singing  ? 
Do  you  hear  the  children  singing?  .  .  .  God,  will 

you  make  them  stop ! ' ' 
[56] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

"And  what  now  in  his  holy  name  have  you  to  do 

with  mountains? 
We're  back  to  town  again,  my  dear,  and  we've  a 

dance  tonight. 
Frozen  hearts  and  falling  music?     Snow  and  stars, 

and — what  the  devil ! 
Say  it  over  to  me  slowly,  and  be  sure  you  have  it 

right." 

' '  God  knows  if  I  be  right  or  wrong  in  saying  what 

I  tell  you, 

Or  if  I  know  the  meaning  any  more  of  what  I  say. 
All  I  know  is,  it  will  kill  me  if  I  try  to  keep  it 

hidden — 
Well,  I  met  him.  .  .  .  Yes,  I  met  him,  and  I  talked 

with  him — today." 


"You  met  him?    Did  you  meet  the  ghost  of  some 
one  you  had  poisoned, 

Long  ago,  before  I  knew  you  for  the  woman  that 
you  are  ? 

Take  a  chair;  and  don't  begin  your  stories  always 
in  the  middle. 

Was  he  man,  or  was  he  demon?    Anyhow,  you've 
gone  too  far 

To  go  back,  and  I'm  your  servant.    I'm  the  lord, 
but  you  're  the  master. 

Now  go  on  with  what  you  know,  for  I  'm  excited. ' ' 
[57] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

"Do  you  mean — 

Do  you  mean  to  make  me  try  to  think  that  you  know 
less  than  I  do?" 

"I  know  that  you  foreshadow  the  beginning  of  a 

scene. 
Pray  be  careful,  and  as  accurate  as  if  the  doors  of 

heaven 
Were  to  swing  or  to  stay  bolted  from  now  on  for 


"Do  you  conceive,  with  all  your  smooth  contempt 

of  every  feeling, 
Of  hiding  what  you  know  and  what  you  must  have 

known  before? 
Is  it  worth  a  woman's  torture  to  stand  here  and 

have  you  smiling, 
With  only  your  poor  fetish  of  possession  on  your 

side? 
No  thing  but  one  is  wholly  sure,  and  that 's  not  one 

to  scare  me ; 
When  I  meet  it  I  may  say  to  God  at  last  that  I 

have  tried. 
And  yet,  for  all  I  know,  or  all  I  dare  believe,  my 

trials 
Henceforward  will  be  more  for  you  to  bear  than  are 

your  own; 
And  you  must  give  me  keys  of  yours  to  rooms  I 

have  not  entered. 

198] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

Do  you  see  me  on  your  threshold  all  my  life,  and 

there  alone  ? 
Will  you  tell  me  where  you  see  me  in  your  fancy — 

when  it  leads  you 
Far  enough  beyond  the  moment  for  a  glance  at  the 

abyss  1" 

"Will  you  tell  me  what  intrinsic  and  amazing  sort 

of  nonsense 
You  are  crowding  on  the  patience  of  the  man  who 

gives  you — this? 
Look  around  you  and  be  sorry  you're  not  living  in 

an  attic, 
With  a  civet  and  a  fish-net,  and  with  you  to  pay 

the  rent. 
I  say  words  that  you  can  spell  without  the  use  of 

all  your  letters ; 
And  I  grant,  if  you  insist,  that  I've  a  guess  at 

what  you  meant. " 

"Have  I  told  you,  then,  for  nothing,  that  I  met 

him?     Are  you  trying 
To  be  merry  while  you  try  to  make  me  hate  you  ? ' ' 

"Think  again, 

My  dear,  before  you  tell  me,  in  a  language  un 
becoming 

To  a  lady,  what  you  plan  to  tell  me  next.     If  I 
complain, 

[59] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

If  I  seem  an  atom  peevish  at  the  preference  yon 

mention — 
Or  imply,  to  be  precise — you  may  believe,  or  you 

may  not, 
That  I'm  a  trifle  more  aware  of  what  he  wants 

than  you  are. 
But  I  shouldn't  throw  that  at  you.     Make  believe 

that  I  forgot. 
Make  believe  that  he 's  a  genius,  if  you  like, — but  in 

the  meantime 
Don't   go   back  to   rocking-horses.     There,   there, 

there,  now." 


1  'Make  believe! 
When  you  see  me  standing  helpless  on  a  plank 

above  a  whirlpool, 
Do   I  drown,   or   do   I   hear   you   when  you   say 

it?     Make  believe? 
How  much  more  am  I  to  say  or  do  for  you  before 

I  tell  you 
That  I  met  him!     What's  to  follow  now  may  be 

for  you  to  choose. 
Do  you  hear  me  ?    Won 't  you  listen  ?    It 's  an  easy 

thing  to  listen.  .  .  ." 


'And  it's  easy  to  be  crazy  when  there's  everything 
to  lose." 

[60] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

"If  at  last  you  have  a  notion  that  I  mean  what  I 

am  saying, 
Do  I  seem  to  tell  you  nothing  when  I  tell  you  I 

shall  try? 
If  you  save  me,  and  I  lose  him — I  don't  know — it 

won't  much  matter. 
I  dare  say  that  I  've  lied  enough,  but  now  I  do 

not  lie." 


"Do  you  fancy  me  the  one  man  who  has  waited  and 

said  nothing 
While  a  wife  has  dragged  an  old  infatuation  from 

a  tomb  ? 
Give  the  thing  a  little  air  and  it  will  vanish  into 

ashes. 
There  you  are — piff !  presto!" 

"When  I  came  into  this  room, 
It  seemed  as  if  I  saw  the  place,  and  you  there  at 

your  table, 
As  you  are  now  at  this  moment,  for  the  last  time 

in  my  life; 
And  I  told  myself  before  I  came  to  find  you,  'I 

shall  tell  him, 
If  I  can,  what  I  have  learned  of  him  since  I  became 

his  wife.' 
And  if  you  say,  as  I've  no  doubt  you  will  before 

I  finish, 

[61] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

That  you   have  tried  unceasingly,  with  all   your 

might  and  main, 
To  teach  me,  knowing  more  than  I  of  what  it  was 

I  needed, 
Don't  think,  with  all  you  may  have  thought,  that 

you  have  tried  in  vain ; 
For  you  have  taught  me  more  than  hides  in  all 

the  shelves  of  knowledge 
Of  how  little  you  found  that's  in  me  and  was  in 

me  all  along. 
I  believed,  if  I  intruded  nothing  on  you  that  I 

cared  for, 
I'd  be  half  as  much  as  horses, — and  it  seems  that  I 

was  wrong ; 
I  believed  there  was  enough  of  earth  in  me,  with  all 

my  nonsense 

Over  things  that  made  you  sleepy,  to  keep  some 
thing  still  awake; 
But  you  taught  me  soon  to  read  my  book,  and  God 

knows  I  have  read  it — 
Ages  longer  than  an  angel  would  have  read  it  for 

your  sake. 
I  have  said  that  you  must  open  other  doors  than  I 

have  entered, 
But  I  wondered  while  I  said  it  if  I  might  not  be 

obscure. 

Is  there  anything  in  all  your  pedigrees  and  in 
ventories 


[62] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

With  a  value  more  elusive  than  a  dollar's?    Are 

you  sure 
That  if  I  starve  another  year  for  you  I  shall  be 

stronger 
To  endure  another  like  it — and  another — till  I'm 

dead?" 

"Has  your  tame  cat  sold  a  picture? — or  more  likely 

had  a  windfall? 
Or  for  God's  sake,  what's  broke  loose?     Have  you 

a  bee-hive  in  your  head  ? 
A  little  more  of  this  from  you  will  not  be  easy 

hearing. 
Do  you  know  that  ?  Understand  it,  if  you  do ;  for 

if  you  won't.  .  .  . 
What  the  devil  are  you  saying !    Make  believe  you 

never  said  it, 
And  I'll  say  I  never  heard  it.  ...     Oh,  you.  .  .  . 

If  you.  .  .  ." 

"If  I  don't?" 

"There  are  men  who  say  there's  reason  hidden 

somewhere  in  a  woman, 
But  I  doubt  if  God  himself  remembers  where  the 

key  was  hung." 

"He  may  not;  for  they  say  that  even  God  himself 
is  growing. 

[63] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

I  wonder  if  he  makes  believe  that  he  is  growing 

young ; 
I  wonder  if  he  makes  believe  that  women  who  are 

giving 
All  they  have  in  holy  loathing  to  a  stranger  all 

their  lives 
Are    the    wise    ones    who    build    houses    in    the 

Bible.  ..." 

" Stop— you  devil!" 


".  .  .  Or  that  souls  are  any  whiter  when  their 

bodies  are  called  wives. 
If  a  dollar's  worth  of  gold  will  hoop  the  walls  of 

hell  together, 
Why  need  heaven  be  such  a  ruin  of  a  place  that 

never  was? 
And  if  at  last  I  lied  my  starving  soul  away  to 

nothing, 
Are  you  sure  you  might  not  miss  it?     Have  you 

come  to  such  a  pass 
That  you  would  have  me  longer  in  your  arms  if 

you  discovered 
That  I  made  you  into  someone  else.  .  .  .  Oh!  .  .  . 

Well,  there  are  worse  ways. 
But  why  aim  it  at  my  feet — unless  you  fear  you 

may  be  sorry.  .  .  . 
There  are  many  days  ahead  of  you." 

[64] 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

"I  do  not  see  those  days." 

"I  can  see  them.     Granted  even  I  am  wrong,  there 

are  the  children. 
And  are  they  to  praise  their  father  for  his  insight 

if  we  die? 
Do  you  hear  them  ?    Do  you  hear  them  overhead — 

the  children — singing? 
Do  you  hear  them?    Do  you  hear  the  children?" 

"Damn  the  children!" 

"Why? 

What   have   they   done?  .  .  .  Well,   then, — do   it. 
...  Do  it  now,  and  have  it  over. 

"Oh,  you  devil!  ...  Oh,  you.  .  .  ." 

"No,  I'm  not  a  devil,  I'm  a  prophet — 
One  who  sees  the  end  already  of  so  much  that  one 

end  more 
Would  have  now  the  small  importance  of  one  other 

small  illusion, 
Which  in  turn  would  have  a  welcome  where  the 

rest  have  gone  before. 
But  if  I  were  you,  my  fancy  would  look  on  a  little 

farther 
For  the  glimpse  of  a  release  that  may  be  somewhere 

still  in  sight. 

[651 


LONDON  BRIDGE 

Furthermore,  you  must  remember  those  two  hun 
dred  invitations 
For  the  dancing  after  dinner.    We  shall  have  to 

shine  tonight. 
"We  shall  dance,  and  be  as  happy  as  a  pair  of 

merry  spectres, 
On  the  grave  of  all  the  lies  that  we  shall  never 

have  to  tell ; 
We  shall  dance  among  the  ruins  of  the  tomb  of 

our  endurance, 

And  I  have  not  a  doubt  that  we  shall  do  it  very  well. 
There! — I'm  glad  you've  put  it  back;  for  I  don't 

like  it.     Shut  the  drawer  now. 
No — no — don't  cancel  anything.     I'll  dance  until 

I  drop. 
I  can't  walk  yet,  but  I'm  going  to.  ...    Go  away 

somewhere,  and  leave  me.  .  .  . 
Oh,  you  children!     Oh,  you  children!  ...  God, 

will  they  never  stop!" 


[66] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

"WHETHER  all  towns  and  all  who  live  in  them — 
So  long  as  they  be  somewhere  in  this  world 
That  we  in  our  complacency  call  ours — 
Are  more  or  less  the  same,  I  leave  to  you. 
I  should  say  less.    Whether  or  not,  meanwhile, 
We've  all  two  legs — and  as  for  that,  we  haven't — 
There  were  three  kinds  of  men  where  I  was  born : 
The  good,  the  not  so  good,  and  Tasker  Norcross. 
Now  there  are  two  kinds." 

"Meaning,  as  I  divine, 
Your  friend  is  dead,"  I  ventured. 

Ferguson, 

Who  talked  himself  at  last  out  of  the  world 
He  censured,  and  is  therefore  silent  now, 
Agreed  indifferently : ' '  My  friends  are  dead — 
Or  most  of  them." 

"Remember  one  that  isn't," 
I  said,  protesting.    '  *  Honor  him  for  his  ears ; 
Treasure  him  also  for  his  understanding." 
Ferguson  sighed,  and  then  talked  on  again : 
"You  have  an  overgrown  alacrity 

[67] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

For  saying  nothing  much  and  hearing  less; 
And  I've  a  thankless  wonder,  at  the  start, 
How  much  it  is  to  you  that  I  shall  tell 
What  I  have  now  to  say  of  Tasker  Norcross, 
And  how  much  to  the  air  that  is  around  you. 
But  given  a  patience  that  is  not  averse 
To  the  slow  tragedies  of  haunted  men — 
Horrors,  in  fact,  if  you've  a  skilful  eye 
To  know  them  at  their  firesides,  or  out  walking, — " 

" Horrors,"  I  said,  "are  my  necessity; 

And  I  would  have  them,  for  their  best  effect, 

Always  out  walking." 

Ferguson  frowned  at  me: 
"The  wisest  of  us  are  not  those  who  laugh 
Before  they  know.     Most  of  us  never  know — 
Or  the  long  toil  of  our  mortality 
Would  not  be  done.     Most  of  us  never  know — 
And  there  you  have  a  reason  to  believe 
In  God,  if  you  may  have  no  other.     Norcross, 
Or  so  I  gather  of  his  infirmity, 
Was  given  to  know  more  than  he   should  have 

known, 

And  only  God  knows  why.     See  for  yourself 
An  old  house  full  of  ghosts  of  ancestors, 
Who  did  their  best,  or  worst,  and  having  done  it, 
Died  honorably;  and  each  with  a  distinction 
That  hardly  would  have  been  for  him  that  had  it, 

[68] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

Had  honor  failed  him  wholly  as  a  friend. 

Honor  that  is  a  friend  begets  a  friend. 

Whether  or  not  we  love  him,  still  we  have  him; 

And  we  must  live  somehow  by  what  we  have, 

Or  then  we  die.     If  you  say  chemistry, 

Then  you  must  have  your  molecules  in  motion, 

And  in  their  right  abundance.     Failing  either, 

You  have  not  long  to  dance.     Failing  a  friend, 

A  genius,  or  a  madness,  or  a  faith 

Larger  than  desperation,  you  are  here 

For  as  much  longer  than  you  like  as  may  be. 

Imagining  now,  by  way  of  an  example, 

Myself  a  more  or  less  remembered  phantom — 

Again,  I  should  say  less — how  many  times 

A  day  should  I  come  back  to  you  ?    No  answer. 

Forgive  me  when  I  seem  a  little  careless, 

But  we  must  have  examples,  or  be  lucid 

Without  them;  and  I  question  your  adherence 

To  such  an  undramatic  narrative 

As  this  of  mine,  without  the  personal  hook/' 

"A  time  is  given  in  Ecclesiastes 

For  divers  works,"  I  told  him.    "Is  there  one 

For  saying  nothing  in  return  for  nothing  ? 

If  not,  there  should  be. "     I  could  feel  his  eyes, 

And  they  were  like  two  cold  inquiring  points 

Of  a  sharp  metal.    When  I  looked  again, 

To  see  them  shine,  the  cold  that  I  had  felt 

Was  gone  to  make  way  for  a  smouldering 

[69] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

Of  lonely  fire  that  I,  as  I  knew  then, 
Could  never  quench  with  kindness  or  with  lies. 
I  should  have  done  whatever  there  was  to  do 
For  Ferguson,  yet  I  could  not  have  mourned 
In  honesty  for  once  around  the  clock 
The  loss  of  him,  for  my  sake  or  for  his, 
Try  as  I  might;  nor  would  his  ghost  approve, 
Had  I  the  power  and  the  unthinking  will 
To  make  him  tread  again  without  an  aim 
The  road  that  was  behind  him — and  without 
The  faith,  or  friend,  or  genius,  or  the  madness 
That  he  contended  was  imperative. 

After  a  silence  that  had  been  too  long, 
"It  may  be  quite  as  well  we  don't,"  he  said; 
"As  well,  I  mean,  that  we  don't  always  say  it. 
You  know  best  what  I  mean,  and  I  suppose 
You  might  have  said  it  better.     What  was  that? 
Incorrigible?     Am  I  incorrigible? 
Well,  it's  a  word;   and  a  word  has  its  use, 
Or,  like  a  man,  it  will  soon  have  a  grave. 
It's  a  good  word  enough.    Incorrigible, 
May  be,  for  all  I  know,  the  word  for  Norcross. 
See  for  yourself  that  house  of  his  again 
That  he  called  home :    An  old  house,  painted  white, 
Square  as  a  box,  and  chillier  than  a  tomb 
To  look  at  or  to  live  in.     There  were  trees — 
Too  many  of  them,  if  such  a  thing  may  be — 
Before  it  and  around  it.    Down  in  front 
[70] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

There  was  a  road,  a  railroad,  and  a  river; 
Then  there  were  hills  behind  it,  and  more  trees. 
The  thing  would  fairly  stare  at  you  through  trees, 
Like  a  pale  inmate  out  of  a  barred  window 
With  a  green  shade  half  down ;  and  I  dare  say 
People  who  passed  have  said:    'There's  where  he 

lives. 

We  know  him,  but  we  do  not  seem  to  know 
That  we  remember  any  good  of  him, 
Or  any  evil  that  is  interesting. 
There  you  have  all  we  know  and  all  we  care.' 
They  might  have  said  it  in  all  sorts  of  ways; 
And  then,  if  they  perceived  a  cat,  they  might 
Or  might  not  have  remembered  what  they  said. 
The  cat  might  have  a  personality — 
And  maybe  the  same  one  the  Lord  left  out 
Of  Tasker  Norcross,  who,  for  lack  of  it, 
Saw  the  same  sun  go  down  year  after  year; 
All  which  at  last  was  my  discovery. 
And  only  mine,  so  far  as  evidence 
Enlightens  one  more  darkness.    You  have  known 
All  round  you,  all  your  days,  men  who  are  noth 
ing — 

Nothing,  I  mean,  so  far  as  time  tells  yet 
Of  any  other  need  it  has  of  them 
Than  to  make  sextons  hardy — but  no  less 
Are  to  themselves  incalculably  something, 
And  therefore  to  be  cherished.     God,  you  see, 
Being  sorry  for  them  in  their  fashioning, 
[71] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

Indemnified  them  with  a  quaint  esteem 
Of  self,  and  with  illusions  long  as  life. 
You  know  them  well,  and  you  have  smiled  at  them ; 
And  they,  in  their  serenity,  may  have  had 
Their  time  to  smile  at  you.     Blessed  are  they 
That  see  themselves  for  what  they  never  were 
Or  were  to  be,  and  are,  for  their  defect, 
At  ease  with  mirrors  and  the  dim  remarks 
That  pass  their  tranquil  ears." 

"Come,  come/'  said  I; 
"There  may  be  names  in  your  compendium 
That  we  are  not  yet  all  on  fire  for  shouting. 
Skin  most  of  us  of  our  mediocrity, 
We  should  have  nothing  then  that  we  could  scratch. 
The  picture  smarts.     Cover  it,  if  you  please, 
And  do  so  rather  gently.    Now  for  Norcross." 

Ferguson  closed  his  eyes  in  resignation, 
While  a  dead  sigh  came  out  of  him.     ' '  Good  God ! ' ' 
He  said,  and  said  it  only  half  aloud, 
As  if  he  knew  no  longer  now,  nor  cared, 
If  one  were  there  to  listen :  ' '  Have  I  said  nothing — 
Nothing  at  all — of  Norcross?    Do  you  mean 
To  patronize  him  till  his  name  becomes 
A  toy  made  out  of  letters?    If  a  name 
Is  all  you  need,  arrange  an  honest  column 
Of  all  the  people  you  have  ever  known 
That  you  have  never  liked.    You'll  have  enough; 
[72] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

And  you'll  have  mine,  moreover.    No,  not  yet. 

If  I  assume  too  many  privileges, 

I  pay,  and  I  alone,  for  their  assumption; 

By  which,  if  I  assume  a  darker  knowledge 

Of  Norcross  than  another,  let  the  weight 

Of  my  injustice  aggravate  the  load 

That  is  not  on  your  shoulders.    When  I  came 

To  know  this  fellow  Norcross  in  his  house, 

I  found  him  as  I  found  him  in  the  street — 

No  more,  no  less;  indifferent,  but  no  better. 

'Worse'  were  not  quite  the  word:  he  was  not  bad; 

He  was  not  ...  well,  he  was  not  anything. 

Has  your  invention  ever  entertained 

The  picture  of  a  dusty  worm  so  dry 

That  even  the  early  bird  would  shake  his  head 

And  fly  on  farther  for  another  breakfast?" 

"But  why  forget  the  fortune  of  the  worm," 
I  said,  "if  in  the  dryness  you  deplore 
Salvation  centred  and   endured?     Your  Norcross 
May  have  been  one  for  many  to  have  envied." 

"Salvation?    Fortune?    Would    the    worm    say 

that? 

He  might;  and  therefore  I  dismiss  the  worm 
With  all  dry  things  but  one.     Figures  away, 
Do  you  begin  to  see  this  man  a  little? 
Do  you  begin  to  see  him  in  the  air, 
With  all  the  vacant  horrors  of  his  outline 
[73] 


TASKEB  NORCROSS 

For  you  to  fill  with  more  than  it  will  hold  ? 

If  so,  you  needn't  crown  yourself  at  once 

With  epic  laurel  if  you  seem  to  fill  it. 

Horrors,  I  say,  for  in  the  fires  and  forks 

Of  a  new  hell — if  one  were  not  enough — 

I  doubt  if  a  new  horror  would  have  held  him 

With  a  malignant  ingenuity 

More  to  be  feared  than  his  before  he  died. 

You  smile,  as  if  in  doubt.     Well,  smile  again. 

Now  come  into  his  house,  along  with  me: 

The  four  square  sombre  things  that  you  see  first 

Around  you  are  four  walls  that  go  as  high 

As  to  the  ceiling.     Norcross  knew  them  well, 

And  he  knew  others  like  them.     Fasten  to  that 

With  all  the  claws  of  your  intelligence; 

And  hold  the  man  before  you  in  his  house 

As  if  he  were  a  white  rat  in  a  box, 

And  one  that  knew  himself  to  be  no  other. 

I  tell  you  twice  that  he  knew  all  about  it, 

That  you  may  not  forget  the  worst  of  all 

Our  tragedies  begin  with  what  we  know. 

Could  Norcross  only  not  have  known,  I  wonder 

How  many  would  have  blessed  and  envied  him ! 

Could  he  have  had  the  usual  eye  for  spots 

On  others,  and  for  none  upon  himself, 

I  smile  to  ponder  on  the  carriages 

That  might  as  well  as  not  have  clogged  the  town 

In  honor  of  his  end.     For  there  was  gold, 

You  see,  though  all  he  needed  was  a  little, 

[74] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

And  what  he  gave  said  nothing  of  who  gave  it. 
He  would  have  given  it  all  if  in  return 
There  might  have  been  a  more  sufficient  face 
To  greet  him  when  he  shaved.     Though  you  insist 
It  is  the  dower,  and  always,  of  our  degree 
Not  to  be  cursed  with  such  invidious  insight, 
Remember  that  you  stand,  you  and  your  fancy, 
Now  in  his  house ;  and  since  we  are  together, 
See  for  yourself  and  tell  me  what  you  see. 
Tell  me  the  best  you  see.     Make  a  slight  noise 
Of  recognition  when  you  find  a  book 
That  you  would  not  as  lief  read  upside  down 
As  otherwise,  for  example.     If  there  you  fail, 
Observe  the  walls  and  lead  me  to  the  place, 
Where  you  are  led.    If  there  you  meet  a  picture 
That  holds  you  near  it  for  a  longer  time 
Than  you  are  sorry,  you  may  call  it  yours, 
And  hang  it  in  the  dark  of  your  remembrance, 
Where  Norcross  never  sees.    How  can  he  see 
That  has  no  eyes  to  see?    And  as  for  music, 
He  paid  with  empty  wonder  for  the  pangs 
Of  his  infrequent  forced  endurance  of  it ; 
And  having  had  no  pleasure,  paid  no  more 
For  needless  immolation,  or  for  the  sight 
Of  those  who  heard  what  he  was  never  to  hear. 
To  see  them  listening  was  itself  enough 
To  make  him  suffer;  and  to  watch  worn  eyes, 
On  other  days,  of  strangers  who  forgot 
Their  sorrows  and  their  failures  and  themselves 
[75] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

Before  a  few  mysterious  odds  and  ends 
Of  marble  carted  from  the  Parthenon — 
And  all  for  seeing  what  he  was  never  to  see, 
Because  it  was  alive  and  he  was  dead — 
Here  was  a  wonder  that  was  more  profound 
Than  any  that  was  in  fiddles  and  brass  horns. 

' '  He  knew,  and  in  his  knowledge  there  was  death. 
He  knew  there  was  a  region  all  around  him 
That  lay  outside  man's  havoc  and  affairs, 
And  yet  was  not  all  hostile  to  their  tumult, 
Where  poets  would  have  served  and  honored  him, 
And  saved  him,  had  there  been  anything  to  save. 
But  there  was  nothing,  and  his  tethered  range 
Was  only  a  small  desert.    Kings  of  song 
Are  not  for  thrones  in  deserts.     Towers  of  sound 
And  flowers  of  sense  are  but  a  waste  of  heaven 
Where  there  is  none  to  know  them  from  the  rocks 
And  sand-grass  of  his  own  monotony 
That  makes  earth  less  than  earth.     He  could  see 

that, 

And  he  could  see  no  more.     The  captured  light 
That  may  have  been  or  not,  for  all  he  cared, 
The  song  that  is  in  sculpture  was  not  his, 
But  only,  to  his  God-forgotten  eyes, 
One  more  immortal  nonsense  in  a  world 
Where  all  was  mortal,  or  had  best  be  so, 
And  so  be  done  with.    'Art,'  he  would  have  said, 
'Is  not  life,  and  must  therefore  be  a  lie;' 
[76] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

And  with  a  few  profundities  like  that 

He  would  have  controverted  and  dismissed 

The  benefit  of  the  Greeks.     He  had  heard  of  them, 

As  he  had  heard  of  his  aspiring  soul — 

Never  to  the  perceptible  advantage, 

In  his  esteem,  of  either.     'Faith,'  he  said, 

Or  would  have  said  if  he  had  thought  of  it, 

*  Lives  in  the  same  house  with  Philosophy, 

Where  the  two  feed  on  scraps  and  are  forlorn 

As  orphans  after  war.     He  could  see  stars, 

On  a  clear  night,  but  he  had  not  an  eye 

To  see  beyond  them.     He  could  hear  spoken  words, 

But  had  no  ear  for  silence  when  alone. 

He  could  eat  food  of  which  he  knew  the  savor, 

But  had  no  palate  for  the  Bread  of  Life, 

That  human  desperation,  to  his  thinking, 

Made  famous  long  ago,  having  no  other. 

Now  do  you  see?    Do  you  begin  to  see?" 

I  told  him  that  I  did  begin  to  see; 
And  I  was  nearer  than  I  should  have  been 
To  laughing  at  his  malign  inclusiveness, 
When  I  considered  that,  with  all  our  speed, 
We  are  not  laughing  yet  at  funerals. 
I  see  him  now  as  I  could  see  him  then, 
And  I  see  now  that  it  was  good  for  me, 
As  it  was  good  for  him,  that  I  was  quiet ; 
For  Time's  eye  was  on  Ferguson,  and  the  shaft 
Of  its  inquiring  hesitancy  had  touched  him, 
[77] 


TASKER  NORCROSS 

Or  so  I  chose  to  fancy  more  than  once 

Before  he  told  of  Norcross.     When  the  word 

Of  his  release  (he  would  have  called  it  so) 

Made  half  an  inch  of  news,  there  were  no  tears 

That  are  recorded.     Women  there  may  have  been 

To  wish  him  back,  though  I  should  say,  not  knowing, 

The  few  there  were  to  mourn  were  not  for  love, 

And  were  not  lovely.     Nothing  of  them,  at  least, 

Was  in  the  meagre  legend  that  I  gathered 

Years  after,  when  a  chance  of  travel  took  me 

So  near  the  region  of  his  nativity 

That  a  few  miles  of  leisure  brought  me  there ; 

For  there  I  found  a  friendly  citizen 

Who  led  me  to  his  house  among  the  trees 

That  were  above  a  railroad  and  a  river. 

Square  as  a  box  and  chillier  than  a  tomb 

It  was  indeed,  to  look  at  or  to  live  in — 

All  which  had  I  been  told.     ' '  Ferguson  died, 

The  stranger  said,  ' l  and  then  there  was  an  auction. 

I  live  here,  but  I've  never  yet  been  warm. 

Remember  him?    Yes,  I  remember  him. 

I  knew  him — as  a  man  may  know  a  tree — 

For  twenty  years.     He  may  have  held  himself 

A  little  high  when  he  was  here,  but  now  .  .  . 

Yes,  I  remember  Ferguson.     Oh,  yes." 

Others,  I  found,  remembered  Ferguson, 

But  none  of  them  had  heard  of  Tasker  Norcross. 


[78] 


A  SONG  AT  SHANNON'S 

Two  men  came  out  of  Shannon's  having  known 

The  faces  of  each  other  for  as  long 

As  they  had  listened  there  to  an  old  song, 

Sung  thinly  in  a  wastrel  monotone 

By  some  unhappy  night-bird,  who  had  flown 

Too  many  times  and  with  a  wing  too  strong 

To  save  himself,  and  so  done  heavy  wrong 

To  more  frail  elements  than  his  alone. 

Slowly  away  they  went,  leaving  behind 

More  light  than  was  before  them.     Neither  met 

The  other's  eyes  again  or  said  a  word. 

Each  to  his  loneliness  or  to  his  kind, 

Went  his  own  way,  and  with  his  own  regret, 

Not  knowing  what  the  other  may  have  heard. 


[78] 


SOUVENIR 

A  VANISHED  house  that  for  an  hour  I  knew 
By  some  forgotten  chance  when  I  was  young 
Had  once  a  glimmering  window  overhung 
With  honeysuckle  wet  with  evening  dew. 
Along  the  path  tall  dusky  dahlias  grew, 
And  shadowy  hydrangeas  reached  and  swung 
Ferociously;  and  over  me,  among 
The  moths  and  mysteries,  a  blurred  bat  flew. 

Somewhere  within  there  were  dim  presences 
Of  days  that  hovered  and  of  years  gone  by. 
I  waited,  and  between  their  silences 
There  was  an  evanescent  faded  noise; 
And  though  a  child,  I  knew  it  was  the  voice 
Of  one  whose  occupation  was  to  die. 


[80] 


DISCOVERY 

WE  told  of  him  as  one  who  should  have  soared 
And  seen  for  us  the  devastating  light 
Whereof  there  is  not  either  day  or  night, 
And  shared  with  us  the  glamour  of  the  Word 
That  fell  once  upon  Amos  to  record 
For  men  at  ease  in  Zion,  when  the  sight 
Of  ills  obscured  aggrieved  him  and  the  might 
Of  Hamath  was  a  warning  of  the  Lord. 

Assured  somehow  that  he  would  make  us  wise, 
Our  pleasure  was  to  wait ;  and  our  surprise 
Was  hard  when  we  confessed  the  dry  return 
Of  his  regret.     For  we  were  still  to  learn 
That  earth  has  not  a  school  where  we  may  go 
For  wisdom,  or  for  more  than  we  may  know. 


[81] 


FIRELIGHT 

TEN  years  together  without  yet  a  cloud, 
They  seek  each  other's  eyes  at  intervals 
Of  gratefulness  to  firelight  and  four  walls 
For  love's  obliteration  of  the  crowd. 
Serenely  and  perennially  endowed 
And  bowered  as  few  may  be,  their  joy  recalls 
No  snake,  no  sword ;  and  over  them  there  falls 
The  blessing  of  what  neither  says  aloud. 

Wiser  for  silence,  they  were  not  so  glad 
Were  she  to  read  the  graven  tale  of  lines 
On  the  wan  face  of  one  somewhere  alone ; 
Nor  were  they  more  content  could  he  have  had 
Her  thoughts  a  moment  since  of  one  who  shines 
Apart,  and  would  be  hers  if  he  had  known. 


[82] 


THE  NEW  TENANTS 

THE  day  was  here  when  it  was  his  to  know 
How  fared  the  barriers  he  had  built  between 
His  triumph  and  his  enemies  unseen, 
For  them  to  undermine  and  overthrow ; 
And  it  was  his  no  longer  to  forego 
The  sight  of  them,  insidious  and  serene, 
"Where  they  were  delving  always  and  had  been 
Left  always  to  be  vicious  and  to  grow. 

And  there  were  the  new  tenants  who  had  come, 
By  doors  that  were  left  open  unawares, 
Into  his  house,  and  were  so  much  at  home 
There  now  that  he  would  hardly  have  to  guess, 
By  the  slow  guile  of  their  vindictiveness, 
What  ultimate  insolence  would  soon  be  theirs. 


[83] 


INFERENTIAL 

ALTHOUGH  I  saw  before  me  there  the  face 
Of  one  whom  I  had  honored  among  men 
The  least,  and  on  regarding  him  again 
Would  not  have  had  him  in  another  place, 
He  fitted  with  an  unfamiliar  grace 
The  coffin  where  I  could  not  see  him  then 
As  I  had  seen  him  and  appraised  him  when 
I  deemed  him  unessential  to  the  race. 

For  there  was  more  of  him  than  what  I  saw. 

And  there  was  on  me  more  than  the  old  awe 

That  is  the  common  genius  of  the  dead. 

I  might  as  well  have  heard  him:  "Never  mind; 

If  some  of  us  were  not  so  far  behind, 

The  rest  of  us  were  not  so  far  ahead. ' ' 


[84] 


THE  RAT 

As  often  as  he  let  himself  be  seen 
We  pitied  him,  or  scorned  him,  or  deplored 
The  inscrutable  profusion  of  the  Lord 
Who  shaped  as  one  of  us  a  thing  so  mean — 
Who  made  him  human  when  he  might  have  been 
A  rat,  and  so  been  wholly  in  accord 
With  any  other  creature  we  abhorred 
As  always  useless  and  not  always  clean. 

Now  he  is  hiding  all  alone  somewhere, 
And  in  a  final  hole  not  ready  then ; 
For  now  he  is  among  those  over  there 
Who  are  not  coming  back  to  us  again. 
And  we  who  do  the  fiction  of  our  share 
Say  less  of  rats  and  rather  more  of  men. 


[85] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

NOTE. —  Hahel  Robert  and  Varnhagen  von  Ense  vrere  mar 
ried,  after  many  protestations  on  her  part,  in  1814.  The 
marriage  —  so  far  as  he  was  concerned  at  any  rate  —  ap 
pears  to  have  been  satisfactory. 

Now  you  have  read  them  all ;  or  if  not  all, 
As  many  as  in  all  conscience  I  should  fancy 
To  be  enough.     There  are  no  more  of  them — 
Or  none  to  burn  your  sleep,  or  to  bring  dreams 
Of  devils.     If  these   are   not  sufficient,   surely 
You  are  a  strange  young  man.     I  might  live  on 
Alone,  and  for  another  forty  years, 
Or  not  quite  forty, — are  you  happier  now? — 
Always  to  ask  if  there  prevailed  elsewhere 
Another  like  yourself  that  would  have  held 
These  aged  hands  as  long  as  you  have  held  them, 
Not  once  observing,  for  all  I  can  see, 
How  they  are  like  your  mother's.    Well,  you  have 

read 

His  letters  now,  and  you  have  heard  me  say 
That  in  them  are  the  cinders  of  a  passion 
That  was  my  life;  and  you  have  not  yet  broken 
Your  way  out  of  my  house,  out  of  my  sight, — 
Into  the  street.    You  are  a  strange  young  man. 
[86] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

I  know  as  much  as  that  of  you,  for  certain; 
And  I'm  already  praying,  for  your  sake, 
That  you  be  not  too  strange.     Too  much  of  that 
May  lead  you  bye  and  bye  through  gloomy  lanes 
To  a  sad  wilderness,  where  one  may  grope 
Alone,  and  always,  or  until  he  feels 
Ferocious  and  invisible  animals 
That  wait  for  men  and  eat  them  in  the  dark. 
Why  do  you  sit  there  on  the  floor  so  long, 
Smiling  at  me  while  I  try  to  be  solemn? 
Do  you  not  hear  it  said  for  your  salvation, 
When  I  say  truth?    Are  you,  at  four  and  twenty, 
So  little  deceived  in  us  that  you  interpret 
The  humor  of  a  woman  to  be  noticed 
As  her  choice  between  you  and  Acheron? 
Are  you  so  unscathed  yet  as  to  infer 
That  if  a  woman  worries  when  a  man, 
Or  a  man-child,  has  wet  shoes  on  his  feet 
She  may  as  well  commemorate  with  ashes 
The  last  eclipse  of  her  tranquillity? 
If  you  look  up  at  me  and  blink  again, 
I  shall  not  have  to  make  you  tell  me  lies 
To  know  the  letters  you  have  not  been  reading. 
I  see  now  that  I  may  have  had  for  nothing 
A  most  unpleasant  shivering  in  my  conscience 
When  I  laid  open  for  your  contemplation 
The  wealth  of  my  worn  casket.     If  I  did, 
The  fault  was  not  yours  wholly.     Search  again 
This  wreckage  we  may  call  for  sport  a  face, 
[87] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

And  you  may  chance  upon  the  price  of  havoc 

That  I  have  paid  for  a  few  sorry  stones 

That  shine  and  have  no  light — yet  once  were  stars, 

And  sparkled  on  a  crown.     Little  and  weak 

They  seem ;  and  they  are  cold,  I  fear,  for  you. 

But  they  that  once  were  fire  for  me  may  not 

Be  cold  again  for  me  until  I  die; 

And  only  God  knows  if  they  may  be  then. 

There  is  a  love  that  ceases  to  be  love 

In  being  ourselves.     How,  then,  are  we  to  lose  it? 

You  that  are  sure  that  you  know  everything 

There  is  to  know  of  love,  answer  me  that. 

Well?  .  .  .  You  are  not  even  interested. 

Once  on  a  far  off  time  when  I  was  young, 
I  felt  with  your  assurance,  and  all  through  me, 
That  I  had  undergone  the  last  and  worst 
Of  love 's  inventions.     There  was  a  boy  who  brought 
The  sun  with  him  and  woke  me  up  with  it, 
And  that  was  every  morning ;  every  night 
I  tried  to  dream  of  him,  but  never  could, 
More  than  I  might  have  seen  in  Adam's  eyes 
Their  fond  uncertainty  when  Eve  began 
The  play  that  all  her  tireless  progeny 
Are  not  yet  weary  of.     One  scene  of  it 
Was  brief,  but  was  eternal  while  it  lasted ; 
And  that  was  while  I  was  the  happiest 
Of  an  imaginary  six  or  seven, 
Somewhere  in  history  but  not  on  earth, 
[88] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

For  whom  the  sky  had  shaken  and  let  stars 
Bain  down  like  diamonds.     Then  there  were  clouds, 
And  a  sad  end  of  diamonds ;  whereupon 
Despair  came,  like  a  blast  that  would  have  brought 
Tears  to  the  eyes  of  all  the  bears  in  Finland, 
And  love  was  done.     That  was  how  much  I  knew. 
Poor  little  wretch !    I  wonder  where  he  is 
This  afternoon.     Out  of  this  rain,  I  hope. 

At  last,  when  I  had  seen  so  many  days 
Dressed  all  alike,  and  in  their  marching  order, 
Go  by  me  that  I  would  not  always  count  them, 
One  stopped — shattering  the  whole  file  of  Time, 
Or  so  it  seemed ;  and  when  I  looked  again, 
There  was  a  man.     He  struck  once  with  his  eyes, 
And  then  there  was  a  woman.    I,  who  had  come 
To  wisdom,  or  to  vision,  or  what  you  like, 
By  the  old  hidden  road  that  has  no  name, — 
I,  who  was  used  to  seeing  without  flying 
So  much  that  others  fly  from  without  seeing, 
Still  looked,  and  was  afraid,  and  looked  again. 
And  after  that,  when  I  had  read  the  story 
Told  in  his  eyes,  and  felt  within  my  heart 
The  bleeding  wound  of  their  necessity, 
I  knew  the  fear  was  his.     If  I  had  failed  him 
And  flown  away  from  him,  I  should  have  lost 
Ingloriously  my  wings  in  scrambling  back, 
And  found  them  arms  again.    If  he  had  struck  me 
Not  only  with  his  eyes  but  with  his  hands, 
[89] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

I  might  have  pitied  him  and  hated  love, 

And  then  gone  mad.     I,  who  have  been  so  strong — 

Why   don't  you   laugh? — might   even   have   done 

all  that. 

I,  who  have  learned  so  much,  and  said  so  much, 
And  had  the  commendations  of  the  great 
For  one  who  rules  herself — why  don't  you  cry? — 
And  own  a  certain  small  authority 
Among  the  blind,  who  see  no  more  than  ever, 
But  like  my  voice, — I  would  have  tossed  it  all 
To  Tophet  for  one  man ;  and  he  was  jealous. 
I  would  have  wound  a  snake  around  my  neck 
And  then  have  let  it  bite  me  till  I  died, 
If  my  so  doing  would  have  made  me  sure 
That  one  man  might  have  lived ;  and  he  was  jealous. 
I  would  have  driven  these  hands  into  a  cage 
That  held  a  thousand  scorpions,  and  crushed  them, 
If  only  by  so  poisonous  a  trial 
I  could  have  crushed  his  doubt.    I  would  have 

wrung 

My  living  blood  with  mediaeval  engines 
Out  of  my  screaming  flesh,  if  only  that 
Would  have  made  one  man  sure.    I  would  have  paid 
For  him  the  tiresome  price  of  body  and  soul, 
And  let  the  lash  of  a  tongue-weary  town 
Fall  as  it  might  upon  my  blistered  name; 
And  while  it  fell  I  could  have  laughed  at  it, 
Knowing  that  he  had  found  out  finally 

Where  the  wrong  was.    But  there  was  evil  in  him 
[90] 


EAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

That  would  have  made  no  more  of  his  possession 
Than  confirmation  of  another  fault; 
And  there  was  honor — if  you  call  it  honor 
That  hoods  itself  with  doubt  and  wears  a  crown 
Of  lead  that  might  as  well  be  gold  and  fire. 
Give  it  as  heavy  or  as  light  a  name 
As  any  there  is  that  fits.    I  see  myself 
"Without  the  power  to  swear  to  this  or  that 
That  I  might  be  if  he  had  been  without  it. 
Whatever  I  might  have  been  that  I  was  not, 
It  only  happened  that  it  wasn't  so. 
Meanwhile,  you  might  seem  to  be  listening: 
If  you  forget  yourself  and  go  to  sleep, 
My  treasure,  I  shall  not  say  this  again. 
Look  up  once  more  into  my  poor  old  face, 
Where  you  see  beauty,  or  the  Lord  knows  what, 
And  say  to  me  aloud  what  else  there  is 
Than  ruins  in  it  that  you  most  admire. 

No,  there  was  never  anything  like  that; 
Nature  has  never  fastened  such  a  mask 
Of  radiant  and  impenetrable  merit 
On  any  woman  as  you  say  there  is 
On  this  one.    Not  a  mask?     I  thank  you,  sir, 
But  you  see  more  with  your  determination, 
I  fear,  than  with  your  prudence  or  your  conscience  ; 
And  you  have  never  met  me  with  my  eyes 
In  all  the  mirrors  I've  made  faces  at. 
No,  I  shall  never  call  you  strange  again : 
[91] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

You  are  the  young  and  inconvincible 

Epitome  of  all  blind  men  since  Adam. 

May  the  blind  lead  the  blind,  if  that  be  so  ? 

And  we  shall  need  no  mirrors  ?    You  are  saying 

What  most  I  feared  you  might.    But  if  the  blind, 

Or  one  of  them,  be  not  so  fortunate 

As  to  put  out  the  eyes  of  recollection, 

She  might  at  last,  without  her  meaning  it, 

Lead  on  the  other,  without  his  knowing  it, 

Until  the  two  of  them  should  lose  themselves 

Among  dead  craters  in  a  lava-field 

As  empty  as  a  desert  on  the  moon. 

I  am  not  speaking  in  a  theatre, 

But  in  a  room  so  real  and  so  familiar 

That  sometimes  I  would  wreck  it.     Then  I  pause, 

Remembering  there  is  a  King  in  Weimar — 

A  monarch,  and  a  poet,  and  a  shepherd 

Of  all  who  are  astray  and  are  outside 

The  realm  where  they  should  rule.     I  think  of  him, 

And  save  the  furniture;  I  think  of  you, 

And  am  forlorn,  finding  in  you  the  one 

To  lavish  aspirations  and  illusions 

Upon  a  faded  and  forsaken  house 

Where  love,  being  locked  alone,  was  nigh  to  burning 

House  and  himself  together.     Yes,  you  are  strange, 

To  see  in  such  an  injured  architecture 

Room  for  new  love  to  live  in.     Are  you  laughing? 

No?    Well,  you  are  not  crying,  as  you  should  be. 

Tears,  even  if  they  told  only  gratitude 

[92] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

For  your  escape,  and  had  no  other  story, 
Were  surely  more  becoming  than  a  smile 
For  my  unwomanly  straightforwardness 
In  seeing  for  you,  through  my  close  gate  of  years 
Your  forty  ways  to  freedom.     Why  do  you  smile? 
And  while  I  'm  trembling  at  my  faith  in  you 
In  giving  you  to  read  this  book  of  danger 
That  only  one  man  living  might  have  written — 
These  letters,  which  have  been  a  part  of  me 
So  long  that  you  may  read  them  all  again 
As  often  as  you  look  into  my  face, 
And  hear  them  when  I  speak  to  you,  and  feel  them 
Whenever  you  have  to  touch  me  with  your  hand, — 
Why  are  you  so  unwilling  to  be  spared? 
Why  do  you  still  believe  in  me  ?    But  no, 
I'll  find  another  way  to  ask  you  that. 
I  wonder  if  there  is  another  way 
That  says  it  better,  and  means  anything. 
There  is  no  other  way  that  could  be  worse? 
I  was  not  asking  you ;  it  was  myself 
Alone  that  I  was  asking.    Why  do  I  dip 
For  lies,  when  there  is  nothing  in  my  well 
But  shining  truth,  you  say  ?    How  do  you  know  ? 
Truth  has  a  lonely  life  down  where  she  lives; 
And  many  a  time,  when  she  comes  up  to  breathe, 
She  sinks  before  we  seize  her,  and  makes  ripples. 
Possibly  you  may  know  no  more  of  me 
Than  a  few  ripples ;  and  they  may  soon  be  gone, 
Leaving  you  then  with  all  my  shining  truth 
[93] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

Drowned  in  a  shining  water ;  and  when  you  look 
You  may  not  see  me  there,  but  something  else 
That  never  was  a  woman — being  yourself. 
You  say  to  me  my  truth  is  past  all  drowning, 
And  safe  with  you  for  ever?    You  know  all  thatf 
How  do  you  know  all  that,  and  who  has  told  you? 
You  know  so  much  that  I  'm  an  atom  frightened 
Because  you  know  so  little.     And  what  is  this  ? 
You  know  the  luxury  there  is  in  haunting 
The  blasted  thoroughfares  of  disillusion — 
If  that's  your  name  for  them — with  only  ghosts 
For  company?    You  know  that  when  a  woman 
Is  blessed,  or  cursed,  with  a  divine  impatience 
(Another  name  of  yours  for  a  bad  temper) 
She  must  have  one  at  hand  on  whom  to  wreak  it 
(That's  what  you  mean,  whatever  the  turn  you 

give  it), 

Sure  of  a  kindred  sympathy,  and  thereby 
Effect  a  mutual  calm?    You  know  that  wisdom, 
Given  in  vain  to  make  a  food  for  those 
Who  are  without  it,  will  be  seen  at  last, 
And  even  at  last  only  by  those  who  gave  it, 
As  one  or  more  of  the  forgotten  crumbs 
That  others  leave?    You  know  that  men's  applause 
And  women 's  envy  savor  so  much  of  dust 
That  I  go  hungry,  having  at  home  no  fare 
But  the  same  changeless  bread  that  I  may  swallow 
Only  with  tears  and  prayers  ?     Who  told  you  that  ? 
You  know  that  if  I  read,  and  read  alone, 

[94] 


RAHEL  TO  VARNHAGEN 

Too  many  books  that  no  men  yet  have  written, 

I  may  go  blind,  or  worse  ?    You  know  yourself, 

Of  all  insistent  and  insidious  creatures, 

To  be  the  one  to  save  me,  and  to  guard 

For  me  their  flaming  language?    And  you  know 

That  if  I  give  much  headway  to  the  whim 

That's  in  me  never  to  be  quite  sure  that  even 

Through  all  those  years  of  storm  and  fire  I  waited 

For  this  one  rainy  day,  I  may  go  on, 

And  on,  and  on  alone,  through  smoke  and  ashes, 

To  a  cold  end?    You  know  so  dismal  much 

As  that  about  me?  ...  Well,  I  believe  you  do. 


[OS] 


NIMMO 

SINCE  you  remember  Nimmo,  and  arrive 
At  such  a  false  and  florid  and  far  drawn 
Confusion  of  odd  nonsense,  I  connive 
No  longer,  though  I  may  have  led  you  on. 

So  much  is  told  and  heard  and  told  again, 
So  many  with  his  legend  are  engrossed, 
That  I,  more  sorry  now  than  I  was  then, 
May  live  on  to  be  sorry  for  his  ghost. 

You  knew  him,  and  you  must  have  known  his 

eyes,— 

How  deep  they  were,  and  what  a  velvet  light 
Came  out  of  them  when  anger  or  surprise, 
Or  laughter,  or  Francesca,  made  them  bright. 

No,  you  will  not  forget  such  eyes,  I  think, — 
And  you  say  nothing  of  them.    Very  well. 
I  wonder  if  all  history's  worth  a  wink, 
Sometimes,  or  if  my  tale  be  one  to  tell. 

For  they  began  to  lose  their  velvet  light; 
Their  fire  grew  dead  without  and  small  within; 
And  many  of  you  deplored  the  needless  fight 
That  somewhere  in  the  dark  there  must  have  been. 

[96] 


NIMMO 

All  fights  are  needless,  when  they're  not  our  own, 
But  Nimmo  and  Francesca  never  fought. 
Remember  that ;  and  when  you  are  alone, 
Remember  me — and  think  what  I  have  thought. 

Now,  mind  you,  I  say  nothing  of  what  was, 
Or  never  was,  or  could  or  could  not  be: 
Bring  not  suspicion's  candle  to  the  glass 
That  mirrors  a  friend's  face  to  memory. 

Of  what  you  see,  see  all, — but  see  no  more ; 
For  what  I  show  you  here  will  not  be  there. 
The  devil  has  had  his  way  with  paint  before, 
And  he's  an  artist, — and  you  needn't  stare. 

There  was  a  painter  and  he  painted  well : 
He'd  paint  you  Daniel  in  the  lions'  den, 
Beelzebub,  Elaine,  or  William   Tell. 
Pm  coming  back  to  Nimmo 's  eyes  again. 

The  painter  put  the  devil  in  those  eyes, 
Unless  the  devil  did,  and  there  he  stayed ; 
And  then  the  lady  fled  from  paradise, 
And  there's  your  fact.     The  lady  was  afraid. 

She  must  have  been  afraid,  or  may  have  been, 
Of  evil  in  their  velvet  all  the  while; 
But  sure  as  I'm  a  sinner  with  a  skin, 
I'll  trust  the  man  as  long  as  he  can  smile. 

[97] 


NIMMO 

I  trust  him  who  can  smile  and  then  may  live 
In  my  heart's  house,  where  Nimmo  is  today. 
God  knows  if  I  have  more  than  men  forgive 
To  tell  him ;  but  I  played,  and  I  shall  pay. 

I  knew  him  then,  and  if  I  know  him  yet, 

I  know  in  him,  defeated  and  estranged, 

The  calm  of  men  forbidden  to  forget 

The  calm  of  women  who  have  loved  and  changed. 

But  there  are  ways  that  are  beyond  our  ways, 
Or  he  would  not  be  calm  and  she  be  mute, 
As  one  by  one  their  lost  and  empty  days 
Pass  without  even  the  warmth  of  a  dispute. 

God  help  us  all  when  women  think  they  see; 
God  save  us  when  they  do.     I  'm  fair ;  but  though 
I  know  him  only  as  he  looks  to  me, 
I  know  him, — and  I  tell  Francesca  so. 

And  what  of  Nimmo?    Little  would  you  ask 
Of  him,  could  you  but  see  him  as  I  can, 
At  his  bewildered  and  unfruitful  task 
Of  being  what  he  was  born  to  be — a  man. 

Better  forget  that  I  said  anything 
Of  what  your  tortured  memory  may  disclose; 
I  know  him,  and  your  worst  remembering 
Would  count  as  much  as  nothing,  I  suppose. 
[98] 


NIMMO 

Meanwhile,  I  trust  him ;  and  I  know  his  way 
Of  trusting  me,  as  always  in  his  youth. 
I  'm  painting  here  a  better  man,  you  say, 
Than  I,  the  painter;  and  you  say  the  truth. 


PEACE  ON  EARTH 

HE  took  a  frayed  hat  from  his  head, 
And  " Peace  on  Earth"  was  what  he  said. 
"A  morsel  out  of  what  you're  worth, 
And  there  we  have  it:  Peace  on  Earth. 
Not  much,  although  a  little  more 
Than  what  there  was  on  earth  before. 
I'm  as  you  see,  I'm  Ichabod, — 
But  never  mind  the  ways  I've  trod; 
I  'm  sober  now,  so  help  me  God. ' ' 

I  could  not  pass  the  fellow  by. 
' '  Do  you  believe  in  God  ? ' '  said  I ; 
"And  is  there  to  be  Peace  on  Earth?" 

"Tonight  we  celebrate  the  birth," 
He  said,  "of  One  who  died  for  men; 
The  Son  of  God,  we  say.     What  then? 
Your  God,  or  mine?     I'd  make  you  laugh 
Were  I  to  tell  you  even  half 
That  I  have  learned  of  mine  today 
Where  yours  would  hardly  seem  to  stay. 
Could  He  but  follow  in  and  out 
Some  anthropoids  I  know  about, 

[100] 


PEACE  ON  EARTH 

The  God  to  whom  you  may  have  prayed 
Might  see  a  world  He  never  made." 

' '  Your  words  are  flowing  full, ' '  said  I ; 
'  *  But  yet  they  give  me  no  reply ; 
Your  fountain  might  as  well  be  dry." 

"A  wiser  One  than  you,  my  friend, 
Would  wait  and  hear  me  to  the  end ; 
And  for  His  eyes  a  light  would  shine 
Through  this  unpleasant  shell  of  mine 
That  in  your  fancy  makes  of  me 
A  Christmas  curiosity. 
All  right,  I  might  be  worse  than  that; 
And  you  might  now  be  lying  flat; 
I  might  have  done  it  from  behind, 
And  taken  what  there  was  to  find. 
Don't  worry,  for  I'm  not  that  kind. 
'Do  I  believe  in  God?'     Is  that 
The  price  tonight  of  a  new  hat? 
Has  He  commanded  that  His  name 
Be  written  everywhere  the  same? 
Have  all  who  live  in  every  place 
Identified  His  hidden  face? 
Who  knows  but  He  may  like  as  well 
My  story  as  one  you  may  tell? 
And  if  He  show  me  there  be  Peace 
On  Earth,  as  there  be  fields  and  trees 
Outside  a  jail-yard,  am  I  wrong 

[101] 


PEACE  ON  EARTH 

If  now  I  sing  Him  a  new  song? 
Your  world  is  in  yourself,  my  friend, 
For  your  endurance  to  the  end; 
And  all  the  Peace  there  is  on  Earth 
Is  faith  in  what  your  world  is  worth, 
And  saying,  without  any  lies, 
Your  world  could  not  be  otherwise/' 

"One  might  say  that  and  then  be  shot," 
I  told  him;  and  he  said:  "Why  not?" 
I  ceased,  and  gave  him  rather  more 
Than  he  was  counting  of  my  store. 
"And  since  I  have  it,  thanks  to  you, 
Don't  ask  me  what  I  mean  to  do," 
Said  he.    "Believe  that  even  I 
Would  rather  tell  the  truth  than  lie- 
On  Christmas  Eve.    No  matter  why." 

His  unshaved,  educated  face, 

His  inextinguishable  grace, 

And  his  hard  smile,  are  with  me  still, 

Deplore  the  vision  as  I  will; 

For  whatsoever  he  be  at, 

So  droll  a  derelict  as  that 

Should  have  at  least  another  hat. 


[108] 


LATE  SUMMER 
(ALCAICS) 

CONFUSED,  he  found  her  lavishing  feminine 
Gold  upon  clay,  and  found  her  inscrutable; 

And  yet  she  smiled.    Why,  then,  should  horrors 
Be  as  they  were,  without  end,  her  playthings? 

And  why  were  dead  years  hungrily  telling  her 
Lies  of  the  dead,  who  told  them  again  to  her? 

If  now  she  knew,  there  might  be  kindness 
Clamoring  yet  where  a  faith  lay  stifled. 

A  little  faith  in  him,  and  the  ruinous 
Past  would  be  for  time  to  annihilate, 

And  wash  out,  like  a  tide  that  washes 
Out  of  the  sand  what  a  child  has  drawn  there. 

God,  what  a  shining  handful  of  happiness, 
Made  out  of  days  and  out  of  eternities, 

Were  now  the  pulsing  end  of  patience — 
Could  he  but  have  what  a  ghost  had  stolen ! 

What  was  a  man  before  him,  or  ten  of  them, 
While  he  was  here  alive  who  could  answer  them, 

And  in  their  teeth  fling  confirmations 
Harder  than  agates  against  an  egg-shell? 

[103] 


LATE  SUMMER 

But  now  the  man  was  dead,  and  would  come  again 
Never,  though  she  might  honor  ineffably 
The  flimsy  wraith  of  him  she  conjured 
Out  of  a  dream  with  his  wand  of  absence. 

And  if  the  truth  were  now  but  a  mummery, 
Meriting  pride's  implacable  irony, 

So  much  the  worse  for  pride.     Moreover, 
Save  her  or  fail,  there  was  conscience  always. 

Meanwhile,  a  few  misgivings  of  innocence, 
Imploring  to  be  sheltered  and  credited, 

Were  not  amiss  when  she  revealed  them. 
Whether  she  struggled  or  not,  he  saw  them. 

Also,  he  saw  that  while  she  was  hearing  him 
Her  eyes  had  more  and  more  of  the  past  in  them ; 

And  while  he  told  what  cautious  honor 
Told  him  was  all  he  had  best  be  sure  of, 

He  wondered  once  or  twice,  inadvertently, 
Where  shifting  winds  were  driving  his  argosies, 

Long  anchored  and  as  long  unladen, 
Over  the  foam  for  the  golden  chances. 

"If  men  were  not  for  killing  so  carelessly, 
And  women  were  for  wiser  endurances," 

He  said, '  *  we  might  have  yet  a  world  here 
Fitter  for  Truth  to  be  seen  abroad  in; 

[104] 


LATE  SUMMER 

"If  Truth  were  not  so  strange  in  her  nakedness, 
And  we  were  less  forbidden  to  look  at  it, 

We  might  not  have  to  look."     He  stared  then 
Down  at  the  sand  where  the  tide  threw  forward 

Its  cold,  unconquered  lines,  that  unceasingly 
foamed    against    hope,    and   fell.     He   was   calm 

enough, 

Although  he  knew  he  might  be  silenced 
Out  of  all  calm ;  and  the  night  was  coming. 

"I  climb  for  you  the  peak  of  his  infamy 

That  you  may  choose  your  fall  if  you  cling  to  it. 

No  more  for  me  unless  you  say  more. 
All  you  have  left  of  a  dream  defends  you: 

"The  truth  may  be  as  evil  an  augury 
As  it  was  needful  now  for  the  two  of  us. 
We  cannot  have  the  dead  between  us. 
Tell  me  to  go,  and  I  go. ' ' — She  pondered : 

'  *  What  you  believe  is  right  for  the  two  of  us 
Makes  it  as  right  that  you   are  not  one  of  us. 

If  this  be  needful  truth  you  tell  me, 
Spare  me,  and  let  me  have  lies  hereafter." 

She  gazed  away  where  shadows  were  covering 
The  whole  cold  ocean's  healing  indifference. 
No  ship  was  coming.    When  the  darkness 
Fell,  she  was  there,  and  alone,  still  gazing. 

[105] 


AN  EVANGELIST'S  WIFE 

"WHY  am  I  not  myself  these  many  days, 
You  ask?    And  have  you  nothing  more  to  ask? 
I  do  you  wrong?     I  do  not  hear  your  praise 
To  God  for  giving  you  me  to  share  your  task? 

"Jealous — of  Her?     Because  her  cheeks  are  pink, 
And  she  has  eyes?     No,  not  if  she  had  seven. 
If  you  should  only  steal  an  hour  to  think, 
Sometime,  there  might  be  less  to  be  forgiven. 

"No,  you  are  never  cruel.    If  once  or  twice 
I  found  you  so,  I  could  applaud  and  sing. 
Jealous  of — What?     You  are  not  very  wise. 
Does  not  the  good  Book  tell  you  anything? 

"In  David 's  time  poor  Michal  had  to  go. 
Jealous  of  God?    Well,  if  you  like  it  so." 


[106] 


THE  OLD  KING'S  NEW  JESTER 

You  that  in  vain  would  front  the  coming  order 

With  eyes  that  meet  forlornly  what  they  must, 

And  only  with  a  furtive  recognition 

See  dust  where  there  is  dust, — 

Be  sure  you  like  it  always  in  your  faces, 

Obscuring  your  best  graces, 

Blinding  your  speech  and  sight, 

Before  you  seek  again  your  dusty  places 

Where  the  old  wrong  seems  right. 

Longer  ago  than  cave-men  had  their  changes 

Our  fathers  may  have  slain  a  son  or  two, 

Discouraging  a  further  dialectic 

Regarding  what  was  new; 

And  after  their  unstudied  admonition 

Occasional  contrition 

For  their  old-fashioned  ways 

May  have  reduced  their  doubts,  and  in  addition 

Softened  their  final  days. 

Farther  away  than  feet  shall  ever  travel 
Are  the  vague  towers  of  our  unbuilded  State; 
But  there  are  mightier  things  than  we  to  lead  us, 
That  will  not  let  us  wait. 
£107] 


THE  OLD  KING'S  NEW  JESTER 

And  we  go  on  with  none  to  tell  us  whether 
Or  not  we've  each  a  tether 
Determining  how  fast  or  far  we  go; 
And  it  is  well,  since  we  must  go  together, 
That  we  are  not  to  know. 

If  the  old  wrong  and  all  its  injured  glamour 

Haunts  you  by  day  and  gives  your  night  no  peace, 

You  may  as  well,  agreeably  and  serenely, 

Give  the  new  wrong  its  lease ; 

For  should  you  nourish  a  too  fervid  yearning 

For  what  is  not  returning, 

The  vicious  and  unfused  ingredient 

May  give  you  qualms — and  one  or  two  concerning 

The  last  of  your  content. 


T108] 


LAZARUS 

"No,  Mary,  there  was  nothing — not  a  word. 

Nothing,  and  always  nothing.     Go  again 

Yourself,  and  he  may  listen — or  at  least 

Look  up  at  you,  and  let  you  see  his  eyes. 

I  might  as  well  have  been  the  sound  of  rain, 

A  wind  among  the  cedars,  or  a  bird; 

Or  nothing.     Mary,  make  him  look  at  you ; 

And  even  if  he  should  say  that  we  are  nothing, 

To  know  that  you  have  heard  him  will  be  something. 

And  yet  he  loved  us,  and  it  was  for  love 

The  Master  gave  him  back.    Why  did  He  wait 

So  long  before  He  came?    Why  did  He  weep? 

I  thought  He  would  be  glad — and  Lazarus — 

To  see  us  all  again  as  He  had  left  us — 

All  as  it  was,  all  as  it  was  before." 

Mary,  who  felt  her  sister's  frightened  arms 
Like  those  of  someone  drowning  who  had  seized  her, 
Fearing  at  last  they  were  to  fail  and  sink 
Together  in  this  fog-stricken  sea  of  strangeness, 
Fought  sadly,  with  bereaved  indignant  eyes, 
To  find  again  the  fading  shores  of  home 
That  she  had  seen  but  now  could  see  no  longer. 
[109] 


LAZARUS 

Now  she  could  only  gaze  into  the  twilight, 
And  in  the  dimness  know  that  he  was  there, 
Like  someone  that  was  not.     He  who  had  been 
Their  brother,  and  was  dead,  now  seemed  alive 
Only  in  death  again — or  worse  than  death ; 
For  tombs  at  least,  always  until  today, 
Though    sad    were    certain.     There    was    nothing 

certain 

For  man  or  God  in  such  a  day  as  this ; 
For  there  they  were  alone,  and  there  was  he — 
Alone;  and  somewhere  out  of  Bethany, 
The  Master — who  had  come  to  them  so  late, 
Only  for  love  of  them  and  then  so  slowly, 
And  was  for  their  sake  hunted  now  by  men 
Who  feared  Him  as  they  feared  no  other  prey — 
For  the  world's  sake  was  hidden.    "Better  the 

tomb 

For  Lazarus  than  life,  if  this  be  life," 
She  thought;  and  then  to  Martha,  "No,  my  dear," 
She  said  aloud;  "not  as  it  was  before. 
Nothing  is  ever  as  it  was  before, 
Where  Time  has  been.     Here  there  is  more  than 

Time; 

And  we  that  are  so  lonely  and  so  far 
From  home,  since  he  is  with  us  here  again, 
Are  farther  now  from  him  and  from  ourselves 
Than  we  are  from  the  stars.     He  will  not  speak 
Until  the  spirit  that  is  in  him  speaks ; 
And  we  must  wait  for  all  we  are  to  know, 
[HO] 


LAZARUS 

Or  even  to  learn  that  we  are  not  to  know. 

Martha,  we  are  too  near  to  this  for  knowledge, 

And  that  is  why  it  is  that  we  must  wait. 

Our  friends  are  coming  if  we  call  for  them, 

And  there  are  covers  we  '11  put  over  him 

To  make  him  warmer.     We  are  too  young,  perhaps, 

To  say  that  we  know  better  what  is  best 

Than  he.     We  do  not  know  how  old  he  is. 

If  you  remember  what  the  Master  said, 

Try  to  believe  that  we  need  have  no  fear. 

Let  me,  the  selfish  and  the  careless  one, 

Be  housewife  and  a  mother  for  tonight; 

For  I  am  not  so  fearful  as  you  are, 

And  I  was  not  so  eager." 

Martha  sank 

Down  at  her  sister's  feet  and  there  sat  watching 
A  flower  that  had  a  small  familiar  name 
That  was  as  old  as  memory,  but  was  not 
The  name  of  what  she  saw  now  in  its  brief 
And  infinite  mystery  that  so  frightened  her 
That  life  became  a  terror.     Tears  again 
Flooded  her  eyes  and  overflowed.    "No,  Mary," 
She  murmured  slowly,  hating  her  own  words 
Before  she  heard  them,  "you  are  not  so  eager 
To  see  our  brother  as  we  see  him  now; 
Neither  is  He  who  gave  him  back  to  us. 
I  was  to  be  the  simple  one,  as  always, 
And  this  was  all  for  me. ' '    She  stared  again 
[ill] 


LAZARUS 

Over  among  the  trees  where  Lazarus, 

Who  seemed  to  be  a  man  who  was  not  there, 

Might  have  been  one  more  shadow  among  shadows, 

If  she  had  not  remembered.     Then  she  felt 

The  cool  calm  hands  of  Mary  on  her  face, 

And  shivered,  wondering  if  such  hands  were  real. 

"The  Master  loved  you  as  He  loved  us  all, 

Martha ;  and  you  are  saying  only  things 

That  children  say  when  they  have  had  no  sleep. 

Try  somehow  now  to  rest  a  little  while ; 

You  know  that  I  am  here,  and  that  our  friends 

Are  coming  if  I  call." 

Martha  at  last 

Arose,  and  went  with  Mary  to  the  door, 
Where  they  stood  looking  off  at  the  same  place, 
And  at  the  same  shape  that  was  always  there 
As  if  it  would  not  ever  move  or  speak, 
And  always  would  be  there.     "Mary,  go  now, 
Before  the  dark  that  will  be  coming  hides  him. 
I  am  afraid  of  him  out  there  alone, 
Unless  I  see  him;  and  I  have  forgotten 
What  sleep  is.     Go  now — make  him  look  at  you — 
And  I  shall  hear  him  if  he  stirs  or  whispers. 
Go! — or  I'll  scream  and  bring  all  Bethany 
To  come   and  make  him  speak.    Make  him   say 

once 
That  he  is  glad,  and  God  may  say  the  rest. 

[112] 


LAZARUS 

Though  He  say  I  shall  sleep,  and  sleep  for  ever, 
I  shall  not  care  for  that  .     .  Go ! " 


Mary,  moving 

Almost  as  if  an  angry  child  had  pushed  her, 
Went  forward  a  few  steps;  and  having  waited 
As  long  as  Martha's  eyes  would  look  at  hers, 
Went  forward  a  few  more,  and  a  few  more; 
And  so,  until  she  came  to  Lazarus, 
Who  crouched  with  his  face  hidden  in  his  hands, 
Like  one  that  had  no  face.     Before  she  spoke, 
Feeling  her  sister's  eyes  that  were  behind  her 
As  if  the  door  where  Martha  stood  were  now 
As  far  from  her  as  Egypt,  Mary  turned 
Once  more  to  see  that  she  was  there.     Then,  softly, 
Fearing  him  not  so  much  as  wondering 
What  his  first  word  might  be,  said,  "Lazarus, 
Forgive  us  if  we  seemed  afraid  of  you ; ' ' 
And  having  spoken,  pitied  her  poor  speech 
That  had  so  little  seeming  gladness  in  it, 
So  little  comfort,  and  so  little  love. 

There  was  no  sign  from  him  that  he  had  heard, 
Or  that  he  knew  that  she  was  there,  or  cared 
Whether  she  spoke  to  him  again  or  died 
There  at  his  feet.     "We  love  you,  Lazarus, 
And  we  are  not  afraid.     The  Master  said 
We  need  not  be  afraid.    Will  you  not  say 

[113] 


LAZARUS 

To  me  that  you  are  glad  ?    Look,  Lazarus ! 
Look  at  my  face,  and  see  me.     This  is  Mary." 

She  found  his  hands  and  held  them.    They  were 

cool, 

Like  hers,  but  they  were  not  so  calm  as  hers. 
Through  the  white  robes  in  which  his  friends  had 

wrapped  him 

When  he  had  groped  out  of  that  awful  sleep, 
She  felt  him  trembling  and  she  was  afraid. 
At  last  he  sighed;  and  she  prayed  hungrily 
To  God  that  she  might  have  again  the  voice 
Of  Lazarus,  whose  hands  were  giving  her  now 
The  recognition  of  a  living  pressure 
That  was  almost  a  language.     When  he  spoke, 
Only  one  word  that  she  had  waited  for 
Came  from  his  lips,  and  that  word  was  her  name. 

"I  heard  them  saying,  Mary,  that  He  wept 

Before  I  woke/'     The  words  were  low  and  shaken, 

Yet  Mary  knew  that  he  who  uttered  them 

Was  Lazarus;  and  that  would  be  enough 

Until  there  should  be  more  .  .  .  "Who  made  Him 

come, 
That  He  should  weep  for  me?  ...  Was  it  you, 

Mary?" 

The  questions  held  in  his  incredulous  eyes 
Were  more  than  she  would  see.     She  looked  away; 
But  she  had  felt  them  and  should  feel  for  ever, 
UM] 


LAZARUS 

She  thought,  their  cold  and  lonely  desperation 

That  had  the  bitterness  of  all  cold  things 

That  were  not  cruel.     "I  should  have  wept,"  he 

said, 
"If  I  had  been  the  Master.  .  .  ." 

Now  she  could  feel 

His  hands  above  her  hair — the  same  black  hair 
That  once  he  made  a  jest  of,  praising  it, 
While  Martha 's  busy  eyes  had  left  their  work 
To  flash  with  laughing  envy.     Nothing  of  that 
Was  to  be  theirs  again ;  and  such  a  thought 
Was  like  the  flying  by  of  a  quick  bird 
Seen  through  a  shadowy  doorway  in  the  twilight. 
For  now  she  felt  his  hands  upon  her  head, 
Like  weights  of  kindness:  "I  forgive  you,  Mary. . .  . 
You  did  not  know — Martha  could  not  have  known — 
Only  the  Master  knew.  .  .  .  Where  is  He  now? 
Yes,  I  remember.     They  came  after  Him. 
May  the  good  God  forgive  Him.  ...  I  forgive 

Him. 

I  must;  and  I  may  know  only  from  Him 
The  burden  of  all  this.  .  .  .  Martha  was  here — 
But  I  was  not  yet  here.     She  was  afraid.  .  .  . 
Why  did  He  do  it,  Mary?    Was  it— you? 
Was  it   for  you?  .  .  .  Where  are  the   friends  I 

saw? 

Yes,  I  remember.     They  all  went  away. 
I  made  them  go  away.  .  .  .  Where  is  He  now  ? . . . 

[115] 


LAZARUS 

What  do  I  see  down  there?     Do  I  see  Martha — 
Down  by  the  door  ?  .  .  .  I  must  have  time  for  this.  ' ' 

Lazarus  looked  about  him  fearfully, 

And  then  again  at  Mary,  who  discovered 

Awakening  apprehension  in  his  eyes, 

And  shivered  at  his  feet.     All  she  had  feared 

Was  here;  and  only  in  the  slow  reproach 

Of  his  forgiveness  lived  his  gratitude. 

Why  had  he  asked  if  it  was  all  for  her 

That  he  was  here  ?     And  what  had  Martha  meant  ? 

Why  had  the  Master  waited?     What  was  coming 

To  Lazarus,  and  to  them,  that  had  not  come? 

What  had  the  Master  seen  before  He  came, 

That  He  had  come  so  late  ? 

1  'Where  is  He,  Mary?" 

Lazarus  asked  again.     "Where  did  He  go?" 
Once  more  he  gazed  about  him,  and  once  more 
At  Mary  for  an  answer.     "Have  they  found  Him? 
Or  did  He  go  away  because  He  wished 
Never  to  look  into  my  eyes  again?  .  .  . 
That,    I    could    understand.  .  .  .  Where    is    He, 
Mary?" 

"I  do  not  know,"  she  said.     "Yet  in  my  heart 
I  know  that  He  is  living,  as  you  are  living — 
Living,  and  here.     He  is  not  far  from  us. 
He  will  come  back  to  us  and  find  us  all — 

[116] 


LAZARUS 

Lazarus,  Martha,  Mary — everything — 

All  as  it  was  before.    Martha  said  that. 

And  He  said  we  were  not  to  be  afraid. ' ' 

Lazarus  closed  his  eyes  while  on  his  face 

A  tortured  adumbration  of  a  smile 

Flickered  an  instant.     "All  as  it  was  before," 

He  murmured  wearily.     " Martha  said  that; 

And  He  said  you  were  not  to  be  afraid  .  .  . 

Not  you  .  .  .  Not  you  .  .  .  Why  should  you  be 

afraid  ? 

Give  all  your  little  fears,  and  Martha's  with  them, 
To  me ;  and  I  will  add  them  unto  mine, 
Like  a  few  rain-drops  to  Gennesaret." 

"If  you  had  frightened  me  in  other  ways, 

Not  willing  it,"  Mary  said,  "I  should  have  known 

You  still  for  Lazarus.    But  who  is  this? 

Tell  me  again  that  you  are  Lazarus ; 

And  tell  me  if  the  Master  gave  to  you 

No  sign  of  a  new  joy  that  shall  be  coming 

To  this  house  that  He  loved.     Are  you  afraid? 

Are  you  afraid,  who  have  felt  everything — 

And  seen  .  .  .?" 

But  Lazarus  only  shook  his  head, 
Staring  with  his  bewildered  shining  eyes 
Hard  into  Mary's  face.     "I  do  not  know, 
Mary,"  he  said,  after  a  long  time. 
"When  I  came  back,  I  knew  the  Master's  eyes 
[117] 


LAZARUS 

Were  looking  into  mine.     I  looked  at  His, 
And  there  was  more  in  them  than  I  could  see. 
At  first  I  could  see  nothing  but  His  eyes; 
Nothing  else  anywhere  was  to  be  seen — 
Only  His  eyes.     And  they  looked  into  mine — 
Long  into  mine,  Mary,  as  if  He  knew/' 

Mary  began  to  be  afraid  of  words 

As  she  had  never  been  afraid  before 

Of  loneliness  or  darkness,  or  of  death, 

But  now  she  must  have  more  of  them  or  die : 

"He  cannot  know  that  there  is  worse  than  death/' 

She  said.     "And  you  .  .  ." 

"Yes,  there  is  worse  than  death." 
Said  Lazarus;  "and  that  was  what  He  knew; 
And  that  is  what  it  was  that  I  could  see 
This  morning  in  his  eyes.     I  was  afraid, 
But  not  as  you  are.     There  is  worse  than  death, 
Mary ;  and  there  is  nothing  that  is  good 
For  you  in  dying  while  you  are  still  here. 
Mary,  never  go  back  to  that  again. 
You  would  not  hear  me  if  I  told  you  more, 
For  I  should  say  it  only  in  a  language 
That  you  are  not  to  learn  by  going  back. 
To  be  a  child  again  is  to  go  forward — 
And  that  is  much  to  know.     Many  grow  old, 
And  fade,  and  go  away,  not  knowing  how  much 
That  is  to  know.     Mary,  the  night  is  coming, 
[118] 


LAZARUS 

And  there  will  soon  be  darkness  all  around  you. 
Let  us  go  down  where  Martha  waits  for  us, 
And  let  there  be  light  shining  in  this  house." 

He  rose,  but  Mary  would  not  let  him  go: 

'  *  Martha,  when  she  came  back  from  here,  said  only 

That  she  heard  nothing.     And  have  you  no  more 

For  Mary  now  than  you  had  then  for  Martha? 

Is  Nothing,  Lazarus,  all  you  have  for  me? 

Was  Nothing  all  you  found  where  you  have  been? 

If  that  be  so,  what  is  there  worse  than  that — 

Or  better — if  that  be  so?     And  why  should  you, 

With  even  our  love,  go  the  same  dark  road  over?" 

"I  could  not  answer  that,  if  that  were  so," 
Said  Lazarus, — "not  even  if  I  were  God. 
Why  should  He  care  whether  I  came  or  stayed, 
If  that  were  so?    Why  should  the  Master  weep — 
For  me,  or  for  the  world, — or  save  Himself 
Longer  for  nothing?     And  if  that  were  so, 
Why  should  a  few  years'  more  mortality 
Make  Him  a  fugitive  where  flight  were  needless, 
Had  He  but  held  his  peace  and  given  his  nod 
To  an  old  Law  that  would  be  new  as  any  ? 
I  cannot  say  the  answer  to  all  that; 
Though  I  may  say  that  He  is  not  afraid, 
And  that  it  is  not  for  the  joy  there  is 
In  serving  an  eternal  Ignorance 
Of  our  futility  that  He  is  here. 
[119] 


LAZARUS 

Is  that  what  you  and  Martha  mean  by  Nothing? 

Is  that  what  you  are  fearing?     If  that  be  so, 

There  are  more  weeds  than  lentils  in  your  garden. 

And  one  whose  weeds  are  laughing  at  his  harvest 

May  as  well  have  no  garden;  for  not  there 

Shall  he  be  gleaning  the  few  bits  and  orts 

Of  life  that  are  to  save  him.     For  my  part, 

I  am  again  with  you,  here  among  shadows 

That  will  not  always  be  so  dark  as  this; 

Though  now  I  see  there 's  yet  an  evil  in  me 

That  made  me  let  you  be  afraid  of  me. 

No,  I  was  not  afraid — not  even  of  life. 

I  thought  I  was  ...  I  must  have  time  for  this; 

And  all  the  time  there  is  will  not  be  long. 

I  cannot  tell  you  what  the  Master  saw 

This  morning  in  my  eyes.     I  do  not  know. 

I  cannot  yet  say  how  far  I  have  gone, 

Or  why  it  is  that  I  am  here  again, 

Or  where  the  old  road  leads.     I  do  not  know. 

I  know  that  when  I  did  come  back,  I  saw 

His  eyes  again  among  the  trees  and  faces — 

Only  His  eyes;  and  they  looked  into  mine — 

Long  into  mine — long,  long,  as  if  He  knew." 


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JUN  131967 
iLi  u  Arh  £ 


JUN  14   I; 


LIBRARY,  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

Book  SHp-50m-8,'63(D9954s4)458 


313081 


Robinson,  E.A. 
Three  taverns 


Call  Number: 


025 
TUB 


OSS 


313081 


